Parabolic bursting, spike-adding, dips and slices in a minimal model

Abstract

A minimal system for parabolic bursting, whose associated slow flow is integrable, is presented and studied both from the viewpoint of bifurcation theory of slow-fast systems, of the qualitative analysis of its phase portrait and of numerical simulations. We focus the analysis on the spike-adding phenomenon. After a reduction to a periodically forced one-dimensional system, we uncover the link with the dips and slices first discussed by J.E. Littlewood in his famous articles on the periodically forced van der Pol system.