Narrow Results

In this paper, we transform a modified Leslie–Gower predator–prey system into the corresponding fast–slow version by assuming that prey reproduces much faster than predator, and then perform a complete analysis about its dynamics. More specifically, we find the necessary and sufficient conditions of the exact number (zero, one or two) of positive equilibria of the slow–fast system and its (or their) location, and then we further fully determine its (or their) dynamics under explicit conditions. Besides, by converting the slow–fast system into its slow–fast normal form, we are able to characterize its rich dynamics completely, including relaxation oscillation, singular Hopf bifurcation, canard explosion, homoclinic orbits, heteroclinic orbits and global attraction of equilibrium. Moreover, the sufficient conditions to guarantee these various rich dynamics are explicitly given, including the explicit conditions to determine whether singular Hopf bifurcation is supercritical or subcritical, which generally cannot be explicitly derived in the existing literatures. Additionally, the cyclicity of diverse canard cycles is found under explicit conditions. Of particular interest is that we show the existence and uniqueness of one canard cycle without head whose cyclicity is at most two under explicit parameters conditions. Our results complement and enrich the previous work (relaxation oscillation, and global attraction of a boundary equilibrium) about this fast–slow system. We also employ numerical simulations to illustrate our theoretical analysis.

We consider an infinite chain of particles linearly coupled to their nearest neighbors and subject to an anharmonic local potential. The chain is assumed weakly inhomogeneous, i.e. coupling constants, particle masses and on-site potentials can have small variations along the chain. We look for small amplitude and time-periodic solutions, and, in particular, spatially localized ones (discrete breathers). The problem is reformulated as a nonautonomous recurrence in a space of time-periodic functions, where the dynamics is considered along the discrete spatial coordinate. Generalizing to nonautonomous maps a center manifold theorem previously obtained for infinite-dimensional autonomous maps [44], we show that small amplitude oscillations are determined by finite-dimensional nonautonomous mappings, whose dimension depends on the solutions frequency. We consider the case of two-dimensional reduced mappings, which occur for frequencies close to the edges of the phonon band (computed for the unperturbed homogeneous chain). For an homogeneous chain, the reduced map is autonomous and reversible, and bifurcations of reversible homoclinic orbits or heteroclinic solutions are found for appropriate parameter values. These orbits correspond respectively to discrete breathers for the infinite chain, or "dark" breathers superposed on a spatially extended standing wave. Breather existence is shown in some cases for any value of the coupling constant, which generalizes (for small amplitude solutions) an existence result obtained by MacKay and Aubry at small coupling [57]. For an inhomogeneous chain, the study of the nonautonomous reduced map is in general far more involved. Here, the problem is considered when the chain presents a finite number of defects. For the principal part of the reduced recurrence, using the assumption of weak inhomogeneity, we show that homoclinics to 0 exist when the image of the unstable manifold under a linear transformation (depending on the defect sequence) intersects the stable manifold. This provides a geometrical understanding of tangent bifurcations of discrete breathers commonly observed in classes of systems with impurities as defect strengths are varied. The case of a mass impurity is studied in detail, and our geometrical analysis is successfully compared with direct numerical simulations. In addition, a class of homoclinic orbits is shown to persist for the full reduced mapping and yields a family of discrete breathers with maximal amplitude at the impurity site.

The Šil'nikov homoclinic theorem provides one analytic criterion for proving the existence of chaos in three-dimensional autonomous nonlinear systems. In applications of the theorem, however, the existence of a homoclinic orbit that usually determines the geometric structure of the chaotic attractor is not easily verified mainly because there are no available efficient methods. In this paper, based on the undetermined coefficient approach we present a framework of how to find homoclinic orbits in two classes of three-dimensional autonomous nonlinear systems of normal forms, including how to set a reasonable form of expanding series of the homoclinic orbit, how to determine all coefficients in the expansion, and how to find a numerical homoclinic orbit. Numerical examples show that the proposed framework in combination with computer simulation is very efficient.

The nonlinear dynamical behaviors of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) with the initial axial stress are investigated based on Donnell's cylindrical shell model. By using the bifurcation theory of dynamical systems on a vibration equation of SWCNTs, the existence of centers, saddles, families of periodic orbits, homoclinic orbits and/or heteroclinic orbits is shown. Under different initial conditions, various sufficient conditions to guarantee the existence of the above solutions are given and the dynamical behaviors of SWCNTs are well-known.

Bursting is an important behavior pattern of nerve cells and in mathematical models it is often related to bifurcations. However, the onset of bursting and the birth of new spikes are also possible without any bifurcation.

We present a numerical study of a model of Plant which exhibits a periodically bursting behavior in a relevant range of two parameters. In this two-dimensional range the behavior changes continuously, except for a number of tiny regions where spikes are born or die. These islands are extensions of bifurcation islands.

It appears that the generation of spikes can be related to local extrema of the periods of the bursting periodic orbits. This allows to detect the birth of spikes also in parameter regions where no bifurcations occur.

From a biological point of view the average instantaneous spike frequency is probably the most important output variable of a neuron. We show that in the Plant model (in contrast to some other models) this frequency is essentially determined by the number of spikes in a burst.

We study the propagation of nonlinear waves in a three-component reaction–diffusion system. The problem of the existence of the stationary pulse-like solutions is reduced to the analysis of homoclinic trajectories of a fourth-order system of nonlinear ODEs. We have obtained the parameter set corresponding to the homoclinic bifurcations that defines the velocity spectra of the traveling pulses. We have shown that the pulses behave like autowaves annihilating in head-on collision and like dissipative solitons crossing each other, reflecting at boundaries. We have provided a qualitative explanation for such a behavior.

We consider two-parameter families of reversible vector fields having (at the critical parameter value) a homoclinic orbit to a nonhyperbolic fixed point. The nonhyperbolicity is due to a pair of purely imaginary eigenvalues. We give a complete description of the bifurcating one-homoclinic orbits to the center manifold. For that purpose we adapt Lin's method.

By applying the undetermined coefficient method, this paper finds homoclinic and heteroclinic orbits in the Chen system. It analytically demonstrates that the Chen system has one heteroclinic orbit of Ši'lnikov type that connects two nontrivial singular points. The Ši'lnikov criterion guarantees that the Chen system has Smale horseshoes and the horseshoe chaos. In addition, there also exists one homoclinic orbit joined to the origin. The uniform convergence of the series expansions of these two types of orbits are proved in this paper. It is shown that the heteroclinic and homoclinic orbits together determine the geometric structure of Chen's attractor.

Bifurcations of homoclinic orbit with orbit-flip and resonant eigenvalues corresponding to the tangent directions are investigated in a four-dimensional system. The existence, number, coexistence and incoexistence of 1-homoclinic orbit, 1-periodic orbit, 2n-homoclinic orbit and 2n-periodic orbit are given, and the bifurcation surfaces and the existence regions are also located.

I review the early (1885–1975) and more recent history of dynamical systems theory, identifying key principles and themes, including those of dimension reduction, normal form transformation and unfolding of degenerate cases. I end by briefly noting recent extensions and applications in nonlinear fluid and solid mechanics, with a nod toward mathematical biology. I argue throughout that this essentially mathematical theory was largely motivated by nonlinear scientific problems, and that after a long gestation it is propagating throughout the sciences and technology.

The centralizer of a group element g is the group of elements commuting with g. Powers and, if existent, roots of g are contained in the centralizer. We call a centralizer trivial if it consists of the integer powers of g, only.

In the group of torus homeomorphisms, we study the centralizer of torus diffeomorphisms of hyperbolic Anosov type. As a result, the centralizer can be calculated, isomorphically, in the much smaller group of affine torus automorphisms. In particular, Anosov diffeomorphisms of the 2-torus with a unique fixed point possess trivial centralizer, up to a trivial involution.

The identification of individual reactors from data on reactor cascades, for example in chemical engineering, is one source of motivation for the study of roots of diffeomorphisms. Another possible source is the study of commuting diffeomorphisms in finite-dimensional spatially or spatio-temporally chaotic systems.

This paper is part I of a series of contributions on the classification problem of chaos in three-dimensional autonomous quadratic systems. We try to classify chaos, based on the Ši'lnikov criteria, in such a large class of systems into the following four types: (1) chaos of the Ši'lnikov homoclinic orbit type; (2) chaos of the Ši'lnikov heteroclinic orbit type; (3) chaos of the hybrid type; i.e. those with both Ši'lnikov homoclinic and homoclinic orbits; (4) chaos of other types. We are especially interested in finding out all the simplest possible forms of chaotic systems for each type of chaos. Our main contributions are to develop some effective classification methods and to provide a basic classification framework under which each of the four types of chaos can be justified by some examples that are useful for describing the feasibility and procedure of the classification. In particular, we show several novel chaotic attractors, e.g. one hybrid-type chaotic attractor with three equilibria, one heteroclinic orbit and one homoclinic orbit, and one 4-scroll chaotic attractor with five equilibria and two heteroclinic orbits.

We study the problem of existence of homoclinic and heteroclinic orbits of Chen's system. For the case of 2c > a > c > 0 and b ≥ 2a, we prove that the system has no homoclinic orbit but has two and only two heteroclinic orbits.

Existence of chaos is proved in finite-dimensional invariant subspaces for both two- and three-wave interactions. For a simple Galerkin truncation of the 2D Navier–Stokes equation, existence of chaos is also proved.

Bifurcations of homoclinic orbit connecting the strong stable and strong unstable directions are investigated for four-dimensional system. The existence, numbers, co-existence and incoexistence of 1-homoclinic orbit, 2ⁿ-homoclinic orbit, 1-periodic orbit and 2ⁿ-periodic orbit are obtained, and the bifurcation surfaces (including codimension-1 homoclinic bifurcation surfaces, double periodic orbit bifurcation surfaces, homoclinic-doubling bifurcation surfaces, period-doubling bifurcation surfaces and codimension-2 triple periodic orbit bifurcation surface, and homoclinic and double periodic orbit bifurcation surface) and the existence regions are also located.

The classical Šil'nikov homoclinic theorem provides an analytic criterion for proving the existence of chaos in three-dimensional autonomous systems, but it can only be applied to systems with fixed points of the saddle-focus type. This paper extends this powerful theorem to a degenerate case where one of the eigenvalues of the Jacobian evaluated at an equilibrium point is zero and the other two are a pair of conjugate complex numbers, and consequently establishes a set of criteria for proving the existence of chaos in the sense of having Smale horseshoes. Based on this new extended Šil'nikov homoclinic theorem, a new chaotic system is constructed, whose corresponding bounded chaotic attractor is first verified numerically through phase trajectories, Lyapunov exponents, bifurcation routes and Poincaré mappings, followed by theoretical analysis on the existence of one homoclinic orbit, the key component of the extended Šil'nikov homoclinic theorem.

The local moving frame approach is employed to study the bifurcation of a degenerate heterodimensional cycle with orbit-flip in its nontransversal orbit. Under some generic hypotheses, we provide the conditions for the existence, uniqueness and noncoexistence of the homoclinic orbit, heteroclinic orbit and periodic orbit. And we also present the coexistence conditions for the homoclinic orbit and the periodic orbit. But it is impossible for the coexistence of the periodic orbit and the persistent heterodimensional cycle or the coexistence of the homoclinic loop and the persistent heterodimensional cycle. Moreover, the double and triple periodic orbit bifurcation surfaces are established as well. Based on the bifurcation analysis, the bifurcation surfaces and the existence regions are located. An example of application is also given to demonstrate our main results.

This paper reports the finding of an unusual three-dimensional autonomous quadratic Lorenz-like chaotic system which, surprisingly, has two stable node-type of foci as its only equilibria. The new system contains the diffusionless Lorenz system and the Burke–Shaw system, and some others, as special cases. The algebraic form of the new chaotic system is similar to the other Lorenz-type systems, but they are topologically nonequivalent. To further analyze the new system, some dynamical behaviors such as Hopf bifurcation and singularly degenerate heteroclinic and homoclinic orbits, are rigorously proved with simulation verification. Moreover, it is proved that the new system with some specified parameter values has Silnikov-type homoclinic and heteroclinic chaos.

This paper considers a class of three-dimensional systems constructed by rotating some planar symmetric polynomial vector fields. It shows that this class of systems has infinitely many distinct types of knotted periodic orbits, which lie on a family of invariant torus. For two three-dimensional systems, exact explicit parametric representations of the knotted periodic orbits are given. For their perturbed systems, the chaotic behavior is discussed by using two different methods.

For a differential equation in the Chazy class XI (N = 3), the corresponding three-dimensional system is studied by using dynamical system methods and Cosgrove's results. In all level sets, the exact explicit parametric representations of homoclinic orbits, the families of heteroclinic orbits and periodic orbits, as well as the families of unbounded solutions are obtained.