  The incoherent state of the Kuramoto model of coupled oscillators exhibits
marginal modes in mean field theory. We demonstrate that corrections due to
finite size effects render these modes stable in the subcritical case, i.e.
when the population is not synchronous. This demonstration is facilitated by
the construction of a non-equilibrium statistical field theoretic formulation
of a generic model of coupled oscillators. This theory is consistent with
previous results. In the all-to-all case, the fluctuations in this theory are
due completely to finite size corrections, which can be calculated in an
expansion in 1/N, where N is the number of oscillators. The N -> infinity limit
of this theory is what is traditionally called mean field theory for the
Kuramoto model.
