Excitable and oscillatory dynamics in an in-homogeneous chain of excitable systems with delayed coupling (Q1772614)

The authors study chains of \(N\) delay coupled FitzHugh-Nagumo excitable systems \[ \begin{aligned}\dot x_i(t) &= -x_i^3(t) + (a_i+1)x_i^2(t) - a_i x_i(t) - y_i(t) + c_i f(x_{i-1}(t-\tau_i)) + c_i f(x_{i+1}(t-\tau_i)),\\ \dot y_i(t) &= b_i x_i(t) - \gamma_i y_i(t), \qquad i= 1,\dots, N, \end{aligned} \] with periodic boundary conditions at \(i=1\) and \(i=N\). Here, \(x_i,y_i \in \mathbb{R}\), and \(a_i,c_i,b_i,\gamma_i\) are parameters. The main goal of the paper is to compare the results, which have been obtained by the first author and Dragana Todorović [Dynamics of Fitz Hugh-Nagumo excitable systems with delayed coupling. Phys. Rev. E 67, 066222 (2003)] for the case of identical oscillators with the inhomogeneous case, i.e., when parameters of the subsystems are different. Finally, they conclude that the typical features of the long term dynamics are robust with respect to a small inhomogeneity in the parameters. The inhomogeneous system is qualitatively different from the homogeneous one if the parameters are close to the boundary in the parameter space between different dynamical regimes.