  Phase-coupled oscillators serve as paradigmatic models of networks of weakly
interacting oscillatory units in physics and biology. The order parameter which
quantifies synchronization was so far found to be chaotic only in systems with
inhomogeneities. Here we show that even symmetric systems of identical
oscillators may not only exhibit chaotic dynamics, but also chaotically
fluctuating order parameters. Our findings imply that neither inhomogeneities
nor amplitude variations are necessary to obtain chaos, i.e., nonlinear
interactions of phases give rise to the necessary instabilities.
