Transversal heteroclinic and homoclinic orbits in singular perturbation problems (Q810715)

Consider the existence of homoclinic and heteroclinic orbits for the singularly perturbed system of ordinary differential equations \(\dot x=f(x,y,\epsilon),\quad \epsilon \dot y=g(x,y,\epsilon).\) The author develops a method to prove transversal intersection of the stable and unstable manifolds of normally hyperbolic invariant manifolds. These hyperbolic manifolds arise from the dynamics of the reduced problem \(\dot x=0,\quad \dot y=g(x,y,0).\) This work is based on the combined use of invariant manifold theory and methods from homoclinic and heteroclinic bifurcation theory. Analytical conditions for the necessary transversality conditions are obtained. These are Melnikov integral type conditions that depend only on the reduced and the layer system. The method is applied to the problem of heteroclinic orbit for the traveling wave problem of the Fitzhugh-Nagumo equations. A second application deals with transversal orbits homoclinic to hyperbolic periodic orbits and transversal heteroclinic cycles. The obtained result implies chaotic behavior on the neighbourhood of a periodic orbit.