Experimental multistable states for small network of coupled pendula

Chimera states are dynamical patterns emerging in populations of coupled identical oscillators where different groups of oscillators exhibit coexisting synchronous and incoherent behaviors despite homogeneous coupling. Although these states are typically observed in the large ensembles of oscillators, recently it has been shown that so-called weak chimera states may occur in the systems with small numbers of oscillators. Here, we show that similar multistable states demonstrating partial frequency synchronization, can be observed in simple experiments with identical mechanical oscillators, namely pendula. The mathematical model of our experiment shows that the observed multistable states are controlled by elementary dynamical equations, derived from Newton's laws that are ubiquitous in many physical and engineering systems. Our finding suggests that multistable chimera-like states are observable in small networks relevant to various real-world systems.