Nonlinear Stability of Large-Period Traveling Waves Bifurcating from the Heteroclinic Loop in the FitzHugh-Nagumo Equation

Abstract: A wave front and a wave back that spontaneously connect two hyperbolic equilibria, known as a heteroclinic wave loop, give rise to periodic waves with arbitrarily large spatial periods through the heteroclinic bifurcation. The nonlinear stability of these periodic waves is established in the setting of the FitzHugh-Nagumo equation, which is a well-known reaction-diffusion model with degenerate diffusion. First, for general systems, we give the expressions of spectra with small modulus for linearized operators about these periodic waves via the Lyapunov-Schmidt reduction and the Lin-Sandstede method. Second, applying these spectral results to the FitzHugh-Nagumo equation, we establish their diffusive spectral stability. Finally, we consider the nonlinear stability of these periodic waves against localized perturbations. We introduce a spatiotemporal phase modulation $\varphi$, and couple it with the associated modulated perturbation $\mathbf{V}$ along with the unmodulated perturbation $\mathbf{\widetilde{V}}$ to close a nonlinear iteration argument.