Bifurcations in Nagumo equations on graphs and Fiedler vectors (Q6132883)

The paper is mainly concerned with the appearance of bifurcations in the setting of graph differential equations (GDE, in short). In concrete, the authors consider the graph differential equation with normalized diffusion \(d=1\) given by \[ u_i'(t)=\sum_{j\in\mathcal{N}(i)}\left(u_j(t)-u_i(t)\right) + \lambda g(u_i(t)),\, i\in V, \, t\in\mathbb R,\tag{\(\ast\)} \] where the graph \(\mathcal{G}=(V,E)\) is finite and connected, with \(n=|V|\), \(\lambda>0\) represents the reaction strength, and \(g\) is the cubic bistable nonlinearity \(g(u)=u(u-a)(1-u)\) with \(0<a<1\). This finite and connected graph has associated a positive semidefinite matrix \(L=D-A,\) where \(D\) is the diagonal matrix of vertex degrees and \(A\) is the adjacency matrix of \(\mathcal G\), and whose eigenvalues satisfy \(0=\lambda_1 <\lambda_2 \leq \lambda_3 \leq\dots\leq \lambda_n\). The eigenvalue \(\lambda_2\) is the value of the algebraic connectivity of the graph, and its corresponding eigenvectors \(\phi\) are called the Fiedler vectors. Then, roughly speaking, the main theorem establishes that all graphs with simple algebraic connectivity \(\lambda_2\) can be classified in three groups, in which different combinations of transcritical, supercritical pitchfork, and subcritical pitchfork bifurcations occur according to the parameter \(a\) of the nonlinearity \(g\), that is, there exists a unique smooth curve \(\gamma: (u(s), \lambda(s))\) of heterogeneous stationary points of \((\ast)\) emanating from \(\left(\texttt{a},\frac{\lambda_2}{a(1-a)}\right)\), where \(\texttt{a}=(a,\ldots,a)^\texttt{T}\). The classification is strongly related with the Fiedler vector and with the Moore-Penrose pseudoinverse \((-L+\lambda_2 I)^+\). The paper contains also a section devoted to show diagram bifurcations for equation \((\ast)\), with different Laplacian matrices \(L\) associated to three examples on graphs with six vertices, each one corresponding to the bifurcations stated in the main theorem. The paper continues with a generalization for arbitrary nonlinearity \(g(u)\), namely, \(g\) is sufficiently smooth, and \(g(a)=0, g'(a)\neq 0\) for some \(a\in\mathbb R\). In the last section, the authors reflect on the possible prevalence of graphs having simple algebraic connectivity \(\lambda_2\) and, in this frame, conjecture a possible candidate, in the case of supercritical pitchfork bifurcation, for the value of the threshold \(\underline{\lambda}\), the positive value for which there are no spatially heterogeneous solutions for \(\lambda <\underline{\lambda},\) whenever \(a\) and the diffusion coefficient \(d\) are fixed.