Accumulations of T-points in a model for solitary pulses in an excitable reaction-diffusion medium

Abstract:
We consider a family of differential equations that describes traveling waves in a reaction-diffusion equation modeling oxidation of carbon oxide on a platinum surface, near the onset of spatio-temporal chaos. The organizing bifurcation for the bifurcation structure with small carbon oxide pressures, turns out to be a codimension 3 bifurcation involving a homoclinic orbit to an equilibrium undergoing a transcritical bifurcation. We show how infinitely many T-point bifurcations of multi loop heteroclinic cycles occur in the unfolding.