Stability and Bifurcation Analysis of a Fractional Order Delay Differential Equation Involving Cubic Nonlinearity

Abstract

Fractional derivative and delay are important tools in modeling memory properties in the natural system. This work deals with the stability analysis of a fractional order delay differential equation \begin{equation*} D^\alpha x(t)=\delta x(t-\tau)-\epsilon x(t-\tau)^3-px(t)^2+q x(t). \end{equation*} We provide linearization of this system in a neighbourhood of equilibrium points and propose linearized stability conditions. To discuss the stability of equilibrium points, we propose various conditions on the parameters $\delta$, $\epsilon$, $p$, $q$ and $\tau$. Even though there are five parameters involved in the system, we are able to provide the stable region sketch in the $q\delta-$plane for any positive $\epsilon$ and $p$. This provides the complete analysis of stability of the system. Further, we investigate chaos in the proposed model. This system exhibits chaos for a wide range of delay parameter.