Memory-Induced Bifurcation and Oscillations in the Chemical Brusselator Model

Previous studies assumed that the reaction processes in the chemical Brusselator model are memoryless or Markovian. However, as long as a reactant interacts with its environment, the reaction kinetics cannot be described as a memoryless process. This raises a question: how do we predict the behavior of the chemical Brusselator system with molecular memory characterized by nonexponential waiting-time distributions? Here, a novel technique is developed to address this question. This technique converts a non-Markovian question to a Markovian one by introducing effective transition rates that explicitly decode the memory effect. Based on this conversion, it is analytically shown that molecular memory can induce bifurcations and oscillations. Moreover, a set of sufficient conditions are derived, which can guarantee that the system of the rate equations for the Markovian reaction system generates oscillations via memory index-induced bifurcation. In turn, these conditions can guarantee that the original non-Markovian reaction system generates stochastic oscillations. Numerical simulation verifies the theoretical prediction. The overall analysis indicates that molecular memory is not a negligible factor affecting a chemical system’s behavior.