Delay-induced blow-up in a planar oscillation model

In this paper we study a system of delay differential equations from the viewpoint of a finite time blow-up of the solution. We prove that the system admits blow-up solutions, no matter how small the length of the delay is. In the non-delay system every solution approaches to a stable unit circle in the plane, thus time delay induces blow-up of solutions, which we call “delay-induced blow-up” phenomenon. Furthermore, it is shown that the system has a family of infinitely many periodic solutions, while the non-delay system has only one stable limit cycle. The system studied in this paper is an example that arbitrary small delay can be responsible for a drastic change of the dynamics. We show numerical examples to illustrate our theoretical results.

Infinitely many periodic solutions for a semilinear wave equation with x-dependent coefficients

This paper is devoted to the study of periodic (in time) solutions to an one-dimensional semilinear wave equation with x-dependent coefficients under various homogeneous boundary conditions. Such a model arises from the forced vibrations of a nonhomogeneous string and propagation of seismic waves in nonisotropic media. By combining variational methods with an approximation argument, we prove that there exist infinitely many periodic solutions whenever the period is a rational multiple of the length of the spatial interval. The proof is essentially based on the spectral properties of the wave operator with x-dependent coefficients.