Near-pulse solutions of the FitzHugh-Nagumo equations on cylindrical surfaces (Q2043215)

The present paper deals with the stability behavior of the mild solution for the FitzHugh-Nagumo system \(\partial_t\mathbf{u}= F_\rho(\mathbf{u})\) on \(\mathcal{S}_\rho\times\mathbb{R}\subset \mathbb{R}^4\), where \(\mathbf{u}=(u_1,u_2)\) and \(\mathcal{S}_\rho:=\mathbb{R}\times \rho S^1\) stands for infinitely long, thin cylindrical surfaces with radius \(\rho>0\). Here, no external stimulus are considered, that is, \[ F_\rho(\mathbf{u})=\begin{pmatrix} \Delta_{\mathcal{S}_\rho}& -1\\ \varepsilon& -\varepsilon\gamma \end{pmatrix} \begin{pmatrix} u_1\\ u_2\end{pmatrix}+ \begin{pmatrix} -u_1(u_1-\alpha)(u_1-1)\\ 0\end{pmatrix}, \] with \(\Delta_{\mathcal{S}}\) denoting the Laplace--Beltrami operator on \(\mathcal{S}\), \(\varepsilon,\gamma>0\) such that \(\varepsilon\) being sufficiently small and \(0<\alpha< 1/2\). Two cases are addressed: (1) for straight cylinders with constant radius \(\rho=R\leq 1\), mild solutions that are initially close to a given propagating pulse \(\Phi(x-ct)\), with \(c>0\) being its speed, nearly approach the manifold \(\mathcal{M}\) of the translates of \(\Phi\) as time \(t\rightarrow\infty\); and (2) for warped cylinders with variable radius \(\rho=\rho(x,\theta)\), mild solutions that are initially close to a pulse stay near \(\mathcal{M}\) for all time. First, the local well-posedness is established in the class of mild solutions, under \(\rho\) being of class \(C^2\), bounded and bounded away from zero. The proof relies on the Banach contraction mapping theorem. Concerning to the case 1, the proof relies on the semigroups theory applied to the Gâteaux derivative \(L=dG(\Phi)\) of the operator \(G= F_R+c\partial_z\) in the moving frame \(z=x-ct\), and on the spectral projection associated with the zero eigenvalue of the linearization operator \(L\). Concerning to the case 2, the proof relies on a perturbation estimate that controls the dependence of solutions on \(\rho\).