Homoclinic orbits near heteroclinic cycles with one equilibrium and one periodic orbit (Q2575612)

The paper studies the behavior of homoclinic orbits near codimension-1 and -2 heteroclinic cycles between an equilibrium and a periodic orbit for ordinary differential equations in three or higher dimensions. The motivation for the study is a self-organized periodic replication process of travelling pulses which are observed in reaction-diffusion equations. It is well known that heteroclinic networks, where heteroclinic connections are building blocks, allow one to model complicated switching behavior. A natural question is whether the building blocks of such a network form a skeleton for the nearby dynamics in phase space for close-by parameters. When all nodes in the network are hyperbolic fixed-points, several questions of this type have been addressed and answered for generic flows and diffeomorphisms. In the paper, bifurcation studies of heteroclinic networks are extended to heteroclinic cycles between one hyperbolic equilibrium and one maximally hyperbolic periodic orbit. All cases, where the sum of the codimensions of the two heteroclinic connections is 1 or 2, are considered. An important difference of the case considered to that of heteroclinic cycles between equilibria is that the phase shift of a periodic orbit introduces a nonhyperbolic direction which counts towards stable as well as unstable dimensions. The main results presented in the paper may be described as follows. Theorem 1: Fix a pair of solutions which converge to a hyperbolic periodic orbit in forward and backward times, respectively, with the same asymptotic phase. All solutions in a neighborhood of these can be parametrized by a countably infinite family of smooth curves which wind around the periodic orbit \(j\)-times for any sufficiently large \(j\). These solutions are exponentially close in \(j\) to the given pair of solutions. Theorem 2: Near a typical codimension-1 or -2 heteroclinic cycle, there exists a unique, countably infinite family of smooth curve segments of 1-homoclinic orbits to the equilibrium. The 1-homoclinic orbits from the \(j\)th connected curve wind around the periodic orbit \((j+j_0)\)-times for some \(j_0\) and are exponentially close to the cycle in \(j\). Theorem 3: From a typical codimension-2 cycle with finite winding number \(m\geq 1\), precisely \(m\) smooth curves of 1-homoclinic orbits to the equilibrium bifurcate. Theorem 4: In the codimension-2 case (and under some additional hypothesis), the leading order expansion of the parameter curve has one frequency from the imaginary part of the leading stable Floquet exponents of the periodic orbit and one from the winding number. There is no additional condition on the spectral gaps.