Biological network dynamics: Poincar\'e-Lindstedt series and the effect of delays

Abstract

This paper focuses on the Hopf bifurcation in an activator-inhibitor system without diffusion which can be modeled as a delay differential equation. The main result of this paper is the existence of the Poincar\'e-Lindstedt series to all orders for the bifurcating periodic solutions. The model has a non-linearity which is non-polynomial, and yet this allows us to exploit the use of Fourier-Taylor series to develop order-by-order calculations that lead to linear recurrence equations for the coefficients of the Poincar\'e-Lindstedt series. As applications, we implement the computation of the coefficients of these series for any finite order, and use a pseudo-arclength continuation to compute branches of periodic solutions.