Extreme events in a network of heterogeneous Josephson junctions

We report intermittent large spiking events in a heterogeneous network of forced Josephson junctions under the influence of repulsive interaction. The response of the individual junctions has been inspected instead of the collective response of the ensemble, which reveals the large spiking events in a subpopulation with characteristic features of extreme events (EE). The network splits into three clusters of junctions, one in coherent libration, one in incoherent rotational motion, and another subpopulation originating EE, which resembles a chimeralike pattern. EE migrates spatially from one to another subpopulation of junctions with the repulsive strength. The origin of EE in a subpopulation and chimera pattern is a generic effect of distributed damping parameter and repulsive interaction, which we verify with another network of the Liénard system. EE originates in the subpopulation via a local riddling of in-phase synchronization. The probability density function of event heights confirms the rare occurrence of large events and the return time of EE as expressed by interevent intervals in the subgroup follows a Poisson distribution. The mechanism of the origin of such a unique clustering is explained qualitatively.