The duck and the devil: Canards on the staircase (Q2732618)

The authors consider the slow-fast system NEWLINE\[NEWLINEdx/dt = a - \cos x - \cos y, \quad dy/dt-\varepsilon, \tag \(*\) NEWLINE\]NEWLINE on the two-torus \(T^2\) for fixed \(a \in (1,2)\). By studying the Poincaré map, they prove that there exists a sequence of intervals \(I_n \subset \mathbb{R}^+\) with \(|I_n|\rightarrow 0\) as \(n \rightarrow \infty\) such that for any \(\varepsilon \in I_n\) system \((*)\) has an attracting canard cycle. Compared with slow-fast systems in the plane where for given small \(\varepsilon\) the existence of a canard cycle requires the occurence of an additional parameter, the considered example shows that slow-fast systems on the two-torus can exhibit new effects.