Network-induced multistability: Lossy coupling and exotic solitary states

The stability of synchronised networked systems is a multi-faceted challenge for many natural and technological fields, from cardiac and neuronal tissue pacemakers to power grids. In the latter case, the ongoing transition to distributed renewable energy sources is leading to a proliferation of dynamical actors. The desynchronization of a few or even one of those would likely result in a substantial blackout. Thus the dynamical stability of the synchronous state has become a focus of power grid research in recent years. In this letter we uncover that the non-linear stability against large perturbations is dominated and threatened by the presence of \textit{solitary states} in which individual actors desynchronise. Remarkably, when taking physical losses in the network into account, the back-reaction of the network induces new {\it exotic} solitary states in the individual actors, and the stability characteristics of the synchronous state are dramatically altered. These novel effects will have to be explicitly taken into account in the design of future power grids, and their existence poses a challenge for control. While this letter focuses on power grids, the form of the coupling we explore here is generic, and the presence of new states is very robust. We thus strongly expect the results presented here to transfer to other systems of coupled heterogeneous Newtonian oscillators.