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Explosive or Continuous: Incoherent state determines the route to synchronization

Collective behaviors of coupled oscillators have attracted much attention. In this Letter, we propose an ensemble order parameter(EOP) equation that enables us to grasp the essential low-dimensional dynamical mechanism of the explosive synchronization in heterogeneous networks. Dif- ferent solutions of the EOP equation build correspondences with diverse collective states, and different bifurcations reveal various transitions among these collective states. The structural relationship between the incoherent state and synchronous state leads to different routes of transitions to synchronization, either continuous or discontinuous. The explosive synchronization is determined by the bistable state where the measure of each state and the critical points are obtained analytically by using the EOP equation. Our method and results hold for heterogeneous networks with star graph motifs such as scale-free networks, and hence, provide an effective approach in understanding the routes to synchronization in more general complex networks.