Nested mixed-mode oscillations in the forced van der Pol oscillator

The forced van der Pol oscillator has played a fundamental role in the development of nonlinear science. It is notable that the van der Pol oscillator in the absence of an AC forcing term explains the underlying mechanism that induces limit cycles and relaxation oscillations; the forced van der Pol oscillator was the first electric oscillator that, via measurements of the emitted sound, was inferred to exhibit chaotic behavior (van der Pol and van der Mark, 1927). This oscillator thus had a significant influence on the development of chaos theory. It was subsequently demonstrated, via a nonstandard analysis undertaken in the 1980s, that a canard explosion was present in the dynamics exhibited by this oscillator. In previous works (Inaba and Kousaka, (2020); Inaba et al., (2023)), we established the existence of bifurcation structures that are referred to as nested mixed-mode oscillations (MMOs); these structures are generated by a forced Bonhoeffer-van der Pol (BVP) oscillator. Nested MMOs, despite their complexity, are robust, repeatable, and composed of higher dimensional oscillations. In this study, we show that nested MMOs can also be produced by the forced van der Pol oscillator. This paper is of extreme importance as it demonstrates that nested MMOs are not a phenomenon that can only be observed in specific BVP systems. Based on the fact that nested MMO bifurcations also occur in the forced van der Pol oscillator, this study indicates that nested MMOs could represent a phenomenon that is more widely observed than previously believed.