Stability of traveling pulses with oscillatory tails in the FitzHugh-Nagumo system (Q347080)

In a recent work [SIAM J. Math. Anal. 47, No. 5, 3393--3441 (2015; Zbl 1327.35008)], the authors proved that the FitzHugh-Nagumo system \[ u_t=u_{xx}+u(u-a)(1-a)-w \] \[ w_t=\epsilon (u-\gamma w), \] used to model propagation of nerve impulses in axons, admits a travelling-pulse solution with an oscillatory tail, in the regime \(0<a,\epsilon\ll1\), which are fast in the sense that their velocity does not vanish in the limit \(\epsilon\rightarrow 0\). In this work it is proved that this travelling-pulse is stable. This is done by performing a close analysis of the spectrum of the linearized problem around the travelling-pulse solution, proving that, for small \(\epsilon\), the spectrum consists of an essential spectrum, the translational eigenvalue \(\lambda=0\), and an additional real eigenvalue, which is proved to be negative. In addition to the mathematical proofs, numerical computations of the travelling-pulse and of the nontrivial eigenvalue are also presented.