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Abstract

We study two coupled active rotators with Kuramoto-type coupling and focus our attention to specific transitional regimes where the coupling is neither attractive nor repulsive. We show that certain such situations at the edge of synchronization can be characterized by the existence of a time-reversal symmetry of the system. We identify two different cases with such a time-reversal symmetry. The first case is characterized by a non-reciprocal attractive/repulsive coupling. The second case is a reciprocal coupling exactly at the edge between attraction and repulsion. We give a detailed description of possible different types of dynamics and bifurcations for both cases. In particular, we show how the time-reversible coupling can induce both oscillation death and oscillation birth to the active rotators. Moreover, we analyse the coexistence of conservative and dissipative regions in phase space, which is a typical feature of systems with a time-reversal symmetry. We show also, how perturbations breaking the time-reversal symmetry and destroying the conservative regions can lead to complicated types of dissipative dynamics such as the emergence of long-period cycles showing a bursting-like behaviour.