Instability mechanisms of repelling peak solutions in a multi-variable activator-inhibitor system

Emergence of rogue-like waves in a reaction-diffusion system: Stochastic output from deterministic dissipative dynamics

Rogue waves are an intriguing nonlinear phenomenon arising across different scales, ranging from ocean waves through optics to Bose-Einstein condensates. We describe the emergence of rogue wave-like dynamics in a reaction-diffusion system that arise as a result of a subcritical Turing instability. This state is present in a regime where all time-independent states are unstable and consists of intermittent excitation of spatially localized spikes, followed by collapse to an unstable state and subsequent regrowth. We characterize the spatiotemporal organization of spikes and show that in sufficiently large domains the dynamics are consistent with a memoryless process.

Front propagation and global bifurcations in a multivariable reaction-diffusion model

We study the existence and stability of propagating fronts in Meinhardt's multivariable reaction-diffusion model of branching in one spatial dimension. We identify a saddle-node-infinite-period bifurcation of fronts that leads to episodic front propagation in the parameter region below propagation failure and show that this state is stable. Stable constant speed fronts exist only above this parameter value. We use numerical continuation to show that propagation failure is a consequence of the presence of a T-point corresponding to the formation of a heteroclinic cycle in a spatial dynamics description. Additional T-points are identified that are responsible for a large multiplicity of different unstable traveling front-peak states. The results indicate that multivariable models may support new types of behavior that are absent from typical two-variable models but may nevertheless be important in developmental processes such as branching and somitogenesis.