Neutral mixed type functional differential equations (Q330525)

The authors consider implicitly defined equations of mixed type which arose from examining electrical signaling in cardiac tissue and nerve conduction models. They are studying travelling wave solutions \((\phi,c)\) with \(\phi\) waveform and wave speed \(c\) which satisfy the following equation: \[ \sum\limits^N_{j=1}B_j(\xi)\left[-c\phi'(\xi+r_j)+f(\phi(\xi+r_j))\right]=\sum\limits^N_{j=1}A_j\phi'(\xi+r_j), \] with boundary conditions \[ \phi(-\infty)=\phi_-,\phi(\infty)=\phi_+. \] The authors extend the existing Fredholm theory for mixed type functional differential equations developed by Mallet-Paret to implicitly defined equations of mixed type. They give analogous results for the Fredholm alternative theorem, the cocyle property and the spectral flow property. In particular they apply the theoretical results to several examples. For instance they study modeling signal propagation in nerve fibers and show the existence of traveling wave solutions via local continuation.