Canard explosion in delay differential equations (Q300363)

The authors state a generalization of the Fenichel theorem to the context of delay equations with a one-dimensional slow manifold. This extended theory is consequently applied to the delayed self-coupled version of van der Pol oscillator \[ \begin{aligned} x'_t=&x_t-\frac{x_t^3}{3}+y_t+ J(x_t-x_{t-\tau}) \\ y'_t=&\varepsilon(a-x_t), \end{aligned} \] and the existence of canard explosions is proved. In this model, motivated by the analysis of firings of neurons, \(x\) represents the voltage of a cell, \(y\) is a slow adaptation variable, \(J\) represents the average coupling strength between neurons and \(\tau\) the average delay of communication between the cells. The authors show that for a wide range of delays \(\tau\), the canard explosion is similar to the case of the systems with one slow and one fast variables, but that by increasing delays a destabilization the family of small canard cycles may occur.