Period-doubling cascades of canards from the extended Bonhoeffer-van der Pol oscillator

This Letter investigates the period-doubling cascades of canards, generated in the extended Bonhoeffer-van der Pol oscillator. Canards appear by Andronov-Hopf bifurcations (AHBs) and it is confirmed that these AHBs are always supercritical in our system. The cascades of period-doubling bifurcation are followed by mixed-mode oscillations. The detailed two-parameter bifurcation diagrams are derived, and it is clarified that the period-doubling bifurcations arise from a narrow parameter value range at which the original canard in the non-extended equation is observed. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.