Degenerate Turing Bifurcation and the Birth of Localized Patterns in Activator-Inhibitor Systems

Precise conditions are provided for the existence and criticality of Turing bifurcations in a general class of activator-inhibitor reaction-diffusion equations on a one-dimensional infinite domain. The class includes generalized Schnakenberg and Brusselator models, as well as other models with cubic autocatalytic nonlinear terms. Previous numerical work suggests the existence of a bifurcation structure containing localized patterns due to the so-called homoclinic snaking mechanism. This paper provides explicit calculations to justify those results. Two distinct scalings of parameters that lead to tractable normal-form coefficients are considered in the limit that the diffusion ratio \delta^2 \to 0. First, under a small-parameter scaling, the Turing bifurcation is shown to be always subcritical. Second, a large-parameter scaling reveals the Turing bifurcation to be supercritical, leading, by continuity, to the existence of a codimension-two degenerate bifurcation. The sign of a fifth-order normal form coefficient is also computed, which is shown to have the correct sign for the local birth of homoclinic snaking. For the case of the Brusselator, two such codimension-two points can be found explicitly, as can the leading-order expression for the Maxwell point, in a parameter wedge about which localized patterns emerge. Numerical results are found to be consistent with the theory.