  We consider a continuum of phase oscillators on the circle interacting
through an impulsive instantaneous coupling. In contrast with previous studies
on related pulse-coupled models, the stability results obtained in the
continuum limit are global. For the nonlinear transport equation governing the
evolution of the oscillators, we propose (under technical assumptions) a global
Lyapunov function which is induced by a total variation distance between
quantile densities. The monotone time evolution of the Lyapunov function
completely characterizes the dichotomic behavior of the oscillators: either the
oscillators converge in finite time to a synchronous state or they
asymptotically converge to an asynchronous state uniformly spread on the
circle. The results of the present paper apply to popular phase oscillators
models (e.g. the well-known leaky integrate-and-fire model) and draw a strong
parallel between the analysis of finite and infinite populations. In addition,
they provide a novel approach for the (global) analysis of pulse-coupled
oscillators.
