  Perhaps because of the elegance of the central limit theorem, it is often
assumed that distributions in nature will approach singly-peaked, unimodal
shapes reminiscent of the Gaussian normal distribution. However, many systems
behave differently, with variables following apparently bimodal or multimodal
distributions. Here we argue that multimodality may emerge naturally as a
result of repulsive or inhibitory coupling dynamics, and we show rigorously how
it emerges for a broad class of coupling functions in variants of the
paradigmatic Kuramoto model.
