Narrow Results

A simple two-dimensional system is introduced which suggests a qualitative dynamical relationship between (1) stock market prices in the presence of nonlinear trend-followers and nonlinear value investors, (2) the world human population with a competition between a population-dependent growth rate and a nonlinear dependence on a finite carrying capacity and (3) the failure of materials subjected to a time-varying stress with a competition between positive geometrical feedback on the damage variable and nonlinear healing. Our model keeps three key ingredients (inertia, nonlinear positive and negative feedbacks) that compete to give rise to singularities in finite time decorated by accelerating oscillations.

We study spiral waves in a mathematical model of a nonlinear optical system with a feedback loop. Starting from a delayed scalar diffusion equation in a thin annulus with oblique derivative boundary conditions, we shrink the annulus and derive the limiting equation on a circle. Based on the explicitly constructed normal form of the Hopf bifurcation for the one-dimensional delayed scalar diffusion equation, we make predictions about the existence and stability of two-dimensional spirals that we verify in direct numerical simulations, observing pulsating and rotating spiral waves.