Singular Perturbations of Bifurcations

Abstract

An asymptotic theory is presented to analyze perturbations of bifurcations of the solutions of nonlinear problems. The perturbations may result from imperfections, impurities, or other inhomogeneities in the corresponding physical problem. It is shown that for a wide class of problems the perturbations are singular. The method of matched asymptotic expansions is used to obtain asymptotic expansions of the solutions. Global representations of the solutions of the perturbed problem are obtained when the bifurcation solutions are known globally. This procedure also gives a quantitative method for analyzing singularities of nonlinear mappings and their unfoldings. Applications are given to a simple elasticity problem, and to nonlinear boundary value problems.