N. Filipski and M. Golubitsky

The abelian Hopf H mod K theorem

SIAM J. Appl. Dynam. Sys. 9 (2) (2010) 283-291.


We study the symmetries of periodic solutions obtained from Hopf bifurcation in systems with finite abelian symmetries. The H mod K Theorem gives necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of periodic solutions with spatial symmetries $K$ and spatio-temporal symmetries H in systems with finite symmetry group Gamma. Our main result, the Abelian Hopf H mod K Theorem, gives necessary and sufficient conditions for when these H mod K periodic solutions can occur by Hopf bifurcation when Gamma is a finite abelian group. We give examples of our results in the case when the symmetry group Gamma = Z_l X Z_k acts on R^l X R^k by permutation of coordinates. In this case, we classify the H mod K periodic solutions that are obtainable by a generic Hopf bifurcation and show that there exist families of H mod K periodic solutions that cannot be obtained by Hopf bifurcation.