  Understanding the global dynamical behaviour of a network of coupled
oscillators has been a topic of immense research in many fields of science and
engineering. Various factors govern the resulting dynamical behaviour of such
networks, including the number of oscillators and their coupling schemes.
Although these factors are seldom significant in large populations, a small
change in them can drastically affect the global behaviour in small
populations. In this paper, we perform an experimental investigation on the
effect of these factors on the coupled behaviour of a minimal network of
candle-flame oscillators. We observe that strongly coupled oscillators exhibit
the global behaviour of in-phase synchrony and amplitude death, irrespective of
the number and the topology of oscillators. However, when they are weakly
coupled, their global behaviour exhibits the intermittent occurrence of
multiple stable states in time. In addition to states of clustering, chimera,
and weak chimera, we report the experimental discovery of partial amplitude
death in a network of candle-flame oscillators. We also show that closed-loop
networks tend to hold global synchronization for longer duration as compared to
open-loop networks. We believe that our results would find application in
real-life problems such as power grids, neuronal networks, and seizure
dynamics.
