skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Wiggly canards: Growth of traveling wave trains through a family of fast-subsystem foci
A class of two-fast, one-slow multiple timescale dynamical systems is considered that contains the system of ordinary differential equations obtained from seeking travelling-wave solutions to the FitzHugh-Nagumo equations in one space dimension. The question addressed is the mechanism by which a small-amplitude periodic orbit, created in a Hopf bifurcation, undergoes rapid amplitude growth in a small parameter interval, akin to a canard explosion. The presence of a saddle-focus structure around the slow manifold implies that a single periodic orbit undergoes a sequence of folds as the amplitude grows. An analysis is performed under some general hypotheses using a combination ideas from the theory of canard explosion and Shilnikov analysis. An asymptotic formula is obtained for the dependence of the parameter location of the folds on the singular parameter and parameters that control the saddle focus eigenvalues. The analysis is shown to agree with numerical results both for a synthetic normal-form example and the FitzHugh-Nagumo system.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2204758
PAR ID:
10336958
Author(s) / Creator(s):
;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Discrete & Continuous Dynamical Systems - S
Volume:
0
Issue:
0
ISSN:
1937-1632
Page Range / eLocation ID:
0
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. This study explores how uncertainty in time-varying parameter estimates obtained using nonlinear filtering algorithms with parameter tracking affects corresponding model output predictions. Results are demonstrated on a numerical example estimating the time-varying external voltage parameter in the FitzHugh-Nagumo system for modeling the spiking dynamics of neurons. 
    more » « less
  2. Estimating and quantifying uncertainty in system parameters remains a big challenge in applied and computational mathematics. A subset of these problems includes estimating periodic parameters that have unknown dynamics. Along with their time series, the period of these parameters may also be unknown and need to be estimated. The aim of this paper is to address the periodic parameter estimation problem, with particular focus on exploring the associated uncertainty, using Monte Carlo particle methods, such as the ensemble Kalman filter. Both parameter tracking and piecewise function approximations of periodic parameters are considered, highlighting aspects of parameter uncertainty in each approach when considering factors such as the frequency of available data and the number of piecewise segments used in the approximation. Estimation of the period of the periodic parameters and related uncertainty is also analyzed in the piecewise formulation. The pros and cons of each approach are discussed relative to a numerical example estimating the external voltage parameter in the FitzHugh-Nagumo system for modeling the spiking dynamics of neurons. 
    more » « less
  3. Symmetry-breaking in coupled, identical, fast–slow systems produces a rich, dramatic variety of dynamical behavior—such as amplitudes and frequencies differing by an order of magnitude or more and qualitatively different rhythms between oscillators, corresponding to different functional states. We present a novel method for analyzing these systems. It identifies the key geometric structures responsible for this new symmetry-breaking, and it shows that many different types of symmetry-breaking rhythms arise robustly. We find symmetry-breaking rhythms in which one oscillator exhibits small-amplitude oscillations, while the other exhibits phase-shifted small-amplitude oscillations, large-amplitude oscillations, mixed-mode oscillations, or even undergoes an explosion of limit cycle canards. Two prototypical fast–slow systems illustrate the method: the van der Pol equation that describes electrical circuits and the Lengyel–Epstein model of chemical oscillators. 
    more » « less
  4. The generalized nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation with full dispersion (FDNLS) is considered in the semiclassical regime. The Whitham modulation equations are obtained for the FDNLS equation with general linear dispersion and a generalized, local nonlinearity. Assuming the existence of a four-parameter family of two-phase solutions, a multiple-scales approach yields a system of four independent, first-order, quasi-linear conservation laws of hydrodynamic type that correspond to the slow evolution of the two wavenumbers, mass, and momentum of modulated periodic traveling waves. The modulation equations are further analyzed in the dispersionless and weakly nonlinear regimes. The ill-posedness of the dispersionless equations corresponds to the classical criterion for modulational instability (MI). For modulations of linear waves, ill-posedness coincides with the generalized MI criterion, recently identified by Amiranashvili and Tobisch [New J. Phys., 21 (2019), 033029]. A new instability index is identified by the transition from real to complex characteristics for the weakly nonlinear modulation equations. This instability is associated with long wavelength modulations of nonlinear two-phase wavetrains and can exist even when the corresponding one-phase wavetrain is stable according to the generalized MI criterion. Another interpretation is that while infinitesimal perturbations of a periodic wave may not grow, small but finite amplitude perturbations may grow, hence this index identifies a nonlinear instability mechanism for one-phase waves. Classifications of instability indices for multiple FDNLS equations with higher-order dispersion, including applications to finite-depth water waves and the discrete NLS equation, are presented and compared with direct numerical simulations. 
    more » « less
  5. We establish sharp nonlinear stability results for fronts that describe the creation of a periodic pattern through the invasion of an unstable state. The fronts we consider are critical, in the sense that they are expected to mediate pattern selection from compactly supported or steep initial data. We focus on pulled fronts, that is, on fronts whose propagation speed is determined by the linearization about the unstable state in the leading edge, only. We present our analysis in the specific setting of the FitzHugh–Nagumo system, where pattern-forming uniformly translating fronts have recently been constructed rigorously [Carter and Scheel (2018)], but our methods can be used to establish nonlinear stability of pulled pattern-forming fronts in general reaction-diffusion systems. This is the first stability result for critical pattern-selecting fronts and provides a rigorous foundation for heuristic, universal wave number selection laws in growth processes based on a marginal stability conjecture. The main technical challenge is to describe the interaction between two separate modes of marginal stability, one associated with the spreading process in the leading edge, and one associated with the pattern in the wake. We develop tools based on far-field/core decompositions to characterize, and eventually control, the interaction between these two different types of diffusive modes. Linear decay rates are insufficient to close a nonlinear stability argument and we therefore need a sharper description of the relaxation in the wake of the front using a phase modulation ansatz. We control regularity in the resulting quasilinear equation for the modulated perturbation using nonlinear damping estimates. 
    more » « less