Global stability analysis of birhythmicity in a self-sustained oscillator

Abstract

We analyze global stability properties of birhythmicity in a self-sustained system with random excitations. The model is a multi-limit cycles variation of the van der Pol oscillatorintroduced to analyze enzymatic substrate reactions in brain waves. We show that the two frequencies are strongly influenced by the nonlinear coefficients $\alpha$ and $\beta$. With a random excitation, such as a Gaussian white noise, the attractor's global stability is measured by the mean escape time $\tau$ from one limit-cycle. An effective activation energy barrier is obtained by the slope of the linear part of the variation of the escape time $\tau$ versus the inverse noise-intensity 1/D. We find that the trapping barriers of the two frequencies can be very different, thus leaving the system on the same attractor for an overwhelming time. However, we also find that the system is nearly symmetric in a narrow range of the parameters.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures, to appear on Choas, 201