Complex spatiotemporal behavior in a chain of one-way nonlinearly coupled elements (Q2430203)

The subject of the paper is the ring of unidirectionally coupled ordinary differential equations of the form \[ \tau \ddot u_n + \dot u_n = F(u_{n+1}) -F(u_{n}),\quad n=1,\dots,N, \] with boundary condition \(u_{n+N}=u_n\). The system possesses a symmetric stationary solution \(u_n = l = \mathrm{const}\). The authors give conditions for the stability of this stationary solution as well as its Hopf bifurcations. In Hopf bifurcation points, traveling wave solutions are created. In order to study the traveling waves, a weakly nonlinear approach is used.