Perturbations of linear delay differential equations at the verge of instability

Abstract: The characteristic equation for a linear delay differential equation (DDE) has countably infinite roots on the complex plane. This paper considers linear DDEs that are on the verge of instability, i.e. a pair of roots of the characteristic equation lie on the imaginary axis of the complex plane, and all other roots have negative real parts. It is shown that, when small noise perturbations are present, the probability law of the dynamics can be approximated by the probability law of a one dimensional stochastic differential equation (SDE) without delay. This is advantageous because equations without delay are easier to simulate and one-dimensional SDE are analytically tractable. When the perturbations are also linear, it is shown that the stability depends on a specific complex number. The theory is applied to study oscillators with delayed feedback. Some errors in other articles that use multiscale approach are pointed out.