Forced patterns near a Turing-Hopf bifurcation

Abstract

We study time-periodic forcing of spatially extended patterns near a Turing-Hopf bifurcation point. A symmetry-based normal form analysis yields several predictions, including that (i) weak forcing near the intrinsic Hopf frequency enhances or suppresses the Turing amplitude by an amount that scales quadratically with the forcing strength, and (ii) the strongest effect is seen for forcing that is detuned from the Hopf frequency. To apply our results to specific models, we perform a perturbation analysis on general two-component reaction-diffusion systems, which reveals whether the forcing suppresses or enhances the spatial pattern. For the suppressing case, our results are consistent with features of previous experiments on the chlorine dioxide-iodine-malonic acid chemical reaction. However, we also find examples of the enhancing case, which has not yet been observed in experiment. Numerical simulations verify the predicted dependence on the forcing parameters. © 2010 The American Physical Society.