Spectrum and stability of travelling pulses in a coupled FitzHugh--Nagumo equation

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the spectrum and stability of travelling pulses in a coupled FitzHugh--Nagumo equation, extending previous existence results to include nonlinear and spectral stability characterizations.

Contribution

It provides a detailed stability analysis of travelling pulses in a coupled FHN model, including both nonlinear and spectral aspects, building on prior existence results.

Findings

Characterization of nonlinear stability of the travelling pulse.

Spectral stability analysis of the pulse.

Extension of stability results to more general pulse configurations.

Abstract

For a coupled slow--fast FitzHugh--Nagumo(FHN) equation derived from a reaction-diffusion-mechanics (RDM) model, Holzer, Doelman and Kaper in 2013 studied existence and stability of the travelling pulse, which consists of two fast orbit arcs and two slow ones, where one fast segment passes the unique fold point with algebraic decreasing and two slow ones follow normally hyperbolic critical curve segments. Shen and Zhang in 2019 obtained existence of the travelling pulse, whose two fast orbit arcs both exponentially decrease, and one of the slow orbit arcs could be normally hyperbolic or not at the origin. Here we characterize both nonlinear and spectral stabilities of this travelling pulse.