Bifurcations and competing coherent structures in the cubic-quintic Ginzburg--Landau equation. I: Plane wave (CW) solutions (Q813710)

This paper considers the cubic-quintic Ginzburg-Landau equation \[ \partial_t A=\epsilon A+(b_1+ic_2)\partial^2_x A - (b_3-ic_3)| A| ^2A-(b_5-ic_5)| A| ^4 A, \] where \(A(x,t)\) is complex-valued. The problem of finding travelling-wave solutions of the above PDE reduces to a system of ordinary differential equations, and the plane-wave solutions of the form \[ A(x,t)=a e^{-i\omega t}e^{i\psi_0(x-vt)} \] (\(a\), \(\omega\), \(\psi_0\) constants) correspond to stationary solutions of the ODE system, which is then reduced to a 4th-order algebraic equation for the variable \(x=a^2\), whose coefficients depend in a complicated way on the parameters of the original PDE. The main effort of the paper is devoted to a close study of the solution set of this algebraic equation and its bifurcations, as the parameters vary. This is done using the tools of singularity theory, showing that various normal forms for singularities arise for particular parameter values. This allows the investigation of phenomena which are important for understanding the dynamics of the original PDE, like coexistence of several travelling waves for the same parameter values and the existence of isolas in bifurcation diagrams.