  The control of complex systems and network-coupled dynamical systems is a
topic of vital theoretical importance in mathematics and physics with a wide
range of applications in engineering and various other sciences. Motivated by
recent research into smart grid technologies we study here control of
synchronization and consider the important case of networks of coupled phase
oscillators with nonlinear interactions--a paradigmatic example that has guided
our understanding of self-organization for decades. We develop a method for
control based on identifying and stabilizing problematic oscillators, resulting
in a stable spectrum of eigenvalues, and in turn a linearly stable synchronized
state. Interestingly, the amount of control, i.e., number of oscillators,
required to stabilize the network is primarily dictated by the coupling
strength, dynamical heterogeneity, and mean degree of the network, and depends
little on the structural heterogeneity of the network itself.
