Hopf bifurcation and stability of a competition diffusion system with distributed delay (Q2580240)

This paper investigates the combined effect of distributed time delay and diffusion on a two-species competition model of the form: \[ \partial U/\partial t=d\Delta U + r_1 U\Big[ 1- \int_{-\infty}^t f(t-\tau)U(\tau,x)dx -\mu_1\int_{-\infty}^t f(t-\tau)V(\tau,x)dx \Big], \] \[ \partial V/\partial t=d\Delta V + r_2 V\Big[ 1- \mu_2\int_{-\infty}^t f(t-\tau)U(\tau,x)dx -\int_{-\infty}^t f(t-\tau)V(\tau,x)dx \Big], \] where the delay kernel is taken of the form \(f(t)=\alpha^{-2} te^{-t/\alpha}\), and with Neumann (in the first result of the paper) and Dirichlet (in the second result) for \(U,V\) on the boundary of the domain. The first result deals with Neumann boundary conditions on a general bounded domain. While it is known [\textit{L. Zhou} and \textit{C.V. Pao}, Nonlinear Anal., Theory Methods Appl. 6, 1163-1184 (1982; Zbl 0522.92017)] that in the case of no time delay the spatially constant stationary solution is globally asymptotically stable, it is proven here that as the parameter \(\alpha\) increases, this stationary solution undergoes a supercritical Hopf bifurcation, and it is shown by a center-manifold computation that the bifurcating time-periodic solution is stable near the bifurcation point. It should be noted here that due to the fact that this bifurcation is associated to the zero eigenvalue of the Laplacian with Neumann boundary condition, the bifurcating periodic solution obtained is in fact spatially constant (since the same calculations are valid also for the homogeneous system). The stability calculation proves that this spatially homogeneous periodic solution is stable even to spatially non-homogeneous perturations. The second result concerns the case when the domain is a one-dimensional interval, with the values of \(U,V\) at the boundary points imposed to be the equilibrium value of the spatially-homogeneous system. Here it is proven that when \(\alpha\) is fixed to be sufficiently large (note that, due to a change in notation, the \(\alpha\) in section 4 is the reciprocal of the \(\alpha\) in section 2), and one varies the diffusion coefficient \(d\), the spatially constant steady state, which is stable for \(d\) sufficiently large, loses stability at a critical value of \(d\), giving rise to a Hopf bifurcation. Here the bifurcating periodic solution is necessarily spatially non-constant. On the other hand, if \(\alpha\) is small, the steady state remains stable for all values of \(d\).