The Hopfield network model is an artificial neuron biological model with fundamental inspiration to deepen people’s understanding of associative memory of the human brain. The Hopfield network utilize connections to store and retrieve different patterns, mimicking natural efficiency in information processing, like synaptic connections of neurons [1] - [4] . The Hopfield network model explores the intricate connections among neurons, which often expresses the delayed excitable or inhibition feedback due to the neuron memory with discrete or distributed time delays [5] [6] .

As is well known, people investigate the Hopfield network model with its oscillation dynamical behavior undertaken Hopf bifurcation occurring. The authors in paper [1] [7] - [9] have reported Hopf bifurcation with Hopfield network model underlying its symmetrical character. Some authors also explore second Hopf bifurcation of Hopfield network model and both Chaos and hyperchaos atractors are reported [7] [10] - [12] . However, with the known results of spatial symmetry of neuron models, which manifests significant importance in model efficiency, periodical transition phenomena have gradually become an interesting topic in the relevant field [13] [14] . Inspired by the cells prosperous dynamical phenomena observed in numerical simulation results, we develop the period doubling bifurcation of periodical solutions, which has bifurcating branches with doubly periods and usually leads the routes to chaos or quasi-periodical attractors. We know scheme in this paper is mainly dependent on an artificial handbook named DDE-Biftool software [15] [16] . Our referred work devastating and attracting the experiences and skills in conducting the continuous periodical solutions with bifurcating branches of period doubling bifurcation too [15] - [17] .

The often neuron Hopfield model with distributed delay is put forward as the following

$\begin{array}{l}{u^{\prime }}_1\left(t\right)=-b_1{u}_1\left(t\right)+c_1\tanh \left(u_1\left(t-{\tau }_1\right)\right)+a_{12}{c}_2{\displaystyle {\int }_0^{{\tau }_2}\tanh }\left(u_2\left(t-{\tau }_2+s\right)\right)\text{d}s,\\ {u^{\prime }}_2\left(t\right)=-b_2{u}_2\left(t\right)+a_{21}{c}_1{\displaystyle {\int }_0^{{\tau }_2}\tanh }\left(u_1\left(t-{\tau }_2+s\right)\right)\text{d}s+c_2\tanh \left(u_2\left(t-{\tau }_1\right)\right)\end{array}$ (1.1)

Wherein, three distributed time delays period with average delay ${\tau }_i\left(i=1,2,3\right)$ are referred. The coefficients $a_{12},a_{21}$ represent the two mode of information transmitting between neurons, and $c_1,c_2$ describes which neuron is invoked to link up.

The simple version of discrete time delays model of the above Hopfield network is also described as

$\begin{array}{l}{u^{\prime }}_1\left(t\right)=-b_1{u}_1\left(t\right)+c_1\tanh \left(u_1\left(t-{\tau }_1\right)\right)+a_{12}{c}_2\tanh \left(u_2\left(t-{\tau }_2\right)\right),\\ {u^{\prime }}_2\left(t\right)=-b_2{u}_2\left(t\right)+a_{21}{c}_1\tanh \left(u_1\left(t-{\tau }_2\right)\right)+c_2\tanh \left(u_2\left(t-{\tau }_1\right)\right)\end{array}$ (1.2)

The interesting oscillating phenomena of system (1.2) are explored as shown in Figure 1(a) and Figure 1(b) . Both the chaos and quasi-periodical attractors are found with free parameters $c_2$ and time delays ${\tau }_i\left(i=1,2\right)$ chosen. With fixed parameter $a_{12}=1$, $a_{21}=1.2$, system (1.2) manifests periodical oscillation with nearly spatial symmetry. With the progress to be remarkable, we expand doubling period bifurcation of system with the helpful job of Floquet multiplier computed by DDE-Biftool. As for system (1.1), we expand the stability analysis of trivial solution and further reduction system combined with the center manifold theory [11] [18] [19] . Hopf bifurcation occurs if a pair of imaginary roots cross over the imaginary axis and simultaneously, the transversal condition is satisfied. We apply Lyapunov-Schmidt reduction method to derive the normal formal by the trunction system of (1.2) by projecting solution operator onto the center subspace. The stability of bifurcating periodical solution is determined by the normal form and the bifurcation direction is computed. The example of continuing the bifurcating periodical solution by DDE-Biftool is done by continuously varying two-time delays.

Since the distributed time delay Equation (1.1) has a zero characteristic root undertaken Hopf bifurcation happens, the bifurcation of periodical oscillation phenomena is difficult. We transform system (1.1) into DDEs as follows

$\begin{array}{l}{u^{\prime }}_1\left(t\right)=-b_1{u}_1\left(t\right)+c_1\tanh \left(u_1\left(t-{\tau }_1\right)\right)+a_{12}{c}_2{u}_3,\\ {u^{\prime }}_2\left(t\right)=-b_2{u}_2\left(t\right)+a_{21}{c}_1{u}_4+c_2\tanh \left(u_2\left(t-{\tau }_1\right)\right),\\ {u^{\prime }}_3\left(t\right)=\tanh \left(u_2\left(t\right)\right)-\tanh \left(u_2\left(t-{\tau }_2\right)\right),\\ {u^{\prime }}_4\left(t\right)=\tanh \left(u_1\left(t\right)\right)-\tanh \left(u_1\left(t-{\tau }_2\right)\right)\end{array}$ (1.3)

The bifurcating periodical solution is continuously continued by varying time delays. For system (1.2), we replace distributed terms in the Equation by its discrete time delays parts, which is more easily to result in limit cycle bifurcation by DDE-Biftool software. The period doubling bifurcation of periodical solution is found by Floquent multiplier attains at −1. The doubly period solutions of P2 and P4 periodical oscillation are also continued by varying free parameters. The P2 and P4 islands of periodical solutions are simulated.

The whole paper is organized as listed. In Section 2, the stability analysis of system (1.1) is done and Hopf bifurcation arises as the system loss its stability. In Section 3, the normal form is computed by applying the Lyapunov-Schmidt reduction skills combined with the center manifold theory. In Section 4, the period-doubling bifurcation branches the P2 and P4 periodical solutions in system (1.2) is simulated by software. The conclusion is given finally.

The stability property of the distributed time delay system (1.1) is investigated. System (1.1) loss stability as the rightmost characteristic root with positive real part. The linear version of system (1.1) is written as the following

$\begin{array}{l}{u^{\prime }}_1\left(t\right)=-b_1{u}_1\left(t\right)+c_1{u}_1\left(t-{\tau }_1\right)+a_{12}{c}_2{\displaystyle {\int }_0^{{\tau }_2}{u}_2}\left(t-{\tau }_2+s\right)\text{d}s,\\ {u^{\prime }}_2\left(t\right)=-b_2{u}_2\left(t\right)+a_{21}{c}_1{\displaystyle {\int }_0^{{\tau }_2}{u}_1}\left(t-{\tau }_2+s\right)\text{d}s+c_2{u}_2\left(t-{\tau }_1\right)\end{array}$ (2.1)

The characteristic Equation of Equation (2.1) can be written as

$\text{Δ}\left(\lambda \right)=\left|\begin{array}{cc}-b_1-\lambda -\frac{c_1}{{\tau }_1}\frac{1}{\lambda }\left({\text{e}}^{-\lambda {\tau }_1}-1\right)& -a_{12}\frac{c_2}{{\tau }_2}\frac{1}{\lambda }\left({\text{e}}^{-\lambda {\tau }_2}-1\right)\\ -a_{21}\frac{c_1}{{\tau }_1}\frac{1}{\lambda }\left({\text{e}}^{-\lambda {\tau }_1}-1\right)& -b_2-\lambda -\frac{c_2}{{\tau }_2}\frac{1}{\lambda }\left({\text{e}}^{-\lambda {\tau }_2}-1\right)\end{array}\right|$ (2.2)

For simplicity, Equation (2.2) is rewritten as

$\begin{array}{l}\Delta \left(\lambda ,{\tau }_1,{\tau }_2\right)=H\left(\lambda \right){\text{e}}^{-\lambda {\tau }_1}+P\left(\lambda \right)+Q\left(\lambda \right){\text{e}}^{-\lambda {\tau }_2}+W\left(\lambda \right){\text{e}}^{-2\lambda {\tau }_1}+G\left(\lambda \right){\text{e}}^{-2\lambda {\tau }_2}=0\hfill \end{array}$(2.3)

with

$\begin{array}{l}P\left(\lambda \right)=-b_1^2{\lambda }^2-\left(b_1+b_2\right){\lambda }^3-{\lambda }^4+a_{12}{c}_2{a}_{21}{c}_1,\\ Q\left(\lambda \right)=-2a_{12}{c}_2{a}_{21}{c}_1,\\ H\left(\lambda \right)=b_1{\lambda }^2{c}_2+{\lambda }^3{c}_2+b_2{\lambda }^2{c}_1+{\lambda }^3{c}_1,\\ W\left(\lambda \right)=-{\lambda }^2{c}_1{c}_2,G\left(\lambda \right)=a_{12}{c}_2{a}_{21}{c}_1\end{array}$

By setting $\lambda =i\omega ,\left(\omega >0\right)$, we calculate the imaginary roots and seek for the critical value $\left({\tau }_1,{\tau }_2\right)$ of Hopf bifurcation. Setting the real part from the imaginary part of the coefficients as mentioned above,

$\begin{array}{l}{P}_1=\Re \left(P\left(i\omega \right)\right),P_2=\Im \left(P\left(i\omega \right)\right),Q_1=\Re \left(Q\left(i\omega \right)\right),Q_2=\Im \left(Q\left(i\omega \right)\right),\\ H_1=\Re \left(H\left(i\omega \right)\right),H_2=\Im \left(H\left(i\omega \right)\right),W_1=\Re \left(W\left(i\omega \right)\right),W_2=\Im \left(W\left(i\omega \right)\right),\\ G_1=\Re \left(G\left(i\omega \right)\right),G_2=\Im \left(G\left(i\omega \right)\right).\end{array}$

We also set

$\varphi =\mathrm{mod}\left(\omega {\tau }_1,2\pi \right)+2n\pi ,\psi =\mathrm{mod}\left(\omega {\tau }_2,2\pi \right)+2m\pi$ (2.4)

for $m,n=0,1,2,\cdots$. Furthermore, one substitute $\varphi ,\psi$ into Equation (2.3), by the related triangle equality to solve

$\begin{array}{l}\cos \left(\varphi \right)=-\frac{g1\cos \left(2\psi \right)+g_2\sin \left(2\psi \right)+g_3\cos \left(\psi \right)+g_4\sin \left(\psi \right)+g_5}{HH},\\ \sin \left(\varphi \right)=-\frac{g_1\sin \left(2\psi \right)-g_2\cos \left(2\psi \right)-g_4\cos \left(\psi \right)+g_3\sin \left(\psi \right)+g_6}{HH},\\ HH=d_1\sin \left(\psi \right)\cos \left(2\psi \right)+d_2\sin \left(\psi \right)\sin \left(2\psi \right)+d_3\cos \left(\psi \right)\cos \left(2\psi \right)\\ +d_4\cos \left(\psi \right)\sin \left(2\psi \right)+d_5\cos \left(2\psi \right)+d_7\cos \left(\psi \right)+d_6\sin \left(2\psi \right)\\ +d_8\sin \left(\psi \right)+d_9.\end{array}$

with

$\begin{array}{l}{g}_1=G_1{H}_1+G_2{H}_2,g_2=-G_1{H}_2+G_2{H}_1,g_3=H_1{Q}_1+H_2{Q}_2,\\ g_4=H_1{Q}_2-H_2{Q}_1,g_5=H_1{P}_1-H_1{W}_1+H_2{P}_2-H_2{W}_2,\\ g_6=-H_1{P}_2-H_1{W}_2+H_2{P}_1+H_2{W}_1,\\ d_1=-2G_2{Q}_1+2G_1{Q}_2,d_2=2G_2{Q}_2+2G_1{Q}_1,d_3=2G_1{Q}_1+2G_2{Q}_2,\\ d_4=-2G_1{Q}_2+2G_2{Q}_1,d_5=2G_1{P}_1+2G_2{P}_2,d_6=2G_2{P}_1-2G_1{P}_2,\\ d_7=2P_2{Q}_2+2P_1{Q}_1,d_8=2P_1{Q}_2-2P_2{Q}_1,\\ d_9=-W_2^2-W_1^2+P_2^2+P_1^2+Q_1^2+Q_2^2+G_1^2+G_2^2.\end{array}$

Set the functions

$\begin{array}{l}F\left(\psi \right)=\cos {\left(\varphi \right)}^2+\sin {\left(\varphi \right)}^2-1\equiv 0,\\ G\left(\varphi ,\psi \right)=\tan \left(\varphi \right)-\frac{g_1\sin \left(2\psi \right)-g_2\cos \left(2\psi \right)-g_4\cos \left(\psi \right)+g_3\sin \left(\psi \right)+g_6}{g1\cos \left(2\psi \right)+g_2\sin \left(2\psi \right)+g_3\cos \left(\psi \right)+g_4\sin \left(\psi \right)+g_5}\end{array}$ (2.5)

By Equation (2.3), we also get

$\begin{array}{c}D\left(\varphi ,\psi \right)=(H_1\cos \left(\varphi \right)+H_2\sin \left(\varphi \right)+P_1+Q_1\cos \left(\psi \right)+Q_2\sin \left(\psi \right)+G_1\cos \left(2\psi \right)\\ +{G_2\sin \left(2\psi \right))}^2+(-H_1\sin \left(\varphi \right)+P_2+Q_2\cos \left(\psi \right)-Q_1\sin \left(\psi \right)\\ +H_2\cos \left(\varphi \right)+G_2\cos \left(2\psi \right)-{G_1\sin \left(2\psi \right))}^2-W_1^2-W_2^2\end{array}$(2.6)

By Equations (2.5) and Equation (2.6), we solve $\left(\varphi ,\psi ,\omega \right)$ which satisfy the characteristic Equation, hence after Hopf bifurcation value $\left({\tau }_1,{\tau }_2\right)$ are given as

$\{\begin{array}{ll}{\tau }_1=\frac{\varphi +2n\pi }{\omega },\hfill & \text{for}n=0,1,2,\cdots \hfill \\ {\tau }_2=\frac{\psi +2m\pi }{\omega },\hfill & \text{for}m=0,1,2,\cdots \hfill \end{array}$ (2.7)

For example, fixed parameter $a_{12}=1$, $a_{21}=1.2$, $c_1=-2$, $c_2=0.6023012058$, we derive $\left(\varphi ,\psi ,\omega \right)$ from Equations (2.5) and Equation (2.6) which is

$\begin{array}{l}\omega =1.7197,\cos \left(\varphi \right)=0.2172524861,\sin \left(\varphi \right)=0.9761154426,\\ \cos \left(\psi \right)=-0.3828472279,\sin \left(\psi \right)=0.9238116692\end{array}$

and the threshold values for Hopf bifurcation is listed as

$\begin{array}{l}{\tau }_{1,1}=0.7850148049,{\tau }_{2,1}=1.141869341,\\ {\tau }_{1,2}=4.438666784,{\tau }_{2,2}=4.795521320\end{array}$

We draw a picture of Hopf bifurcation lines on $\left({\tau }_1,{\tau }_2\right)$-plane, as shown in Figure 2 . The stability property of the trivial solution is plotted by DDE-Biftool, as shown in Figure 2(a) . Hopf curves are also drawn on $\left({\tau }_1,{\tau }_2\right)$-plane, wherein the blue Hopf lines separate the stable regimes from the unstable regimes, whilst the red Hopf lines denote Hopf lines in the unstable regime, as shown in Figure 2(b) . To determine the transversal condition for Hopf bifurcation, we compute the differential $\text{Δ}\left(\lambda ,{\tau }_1,{\tau }_2\right)$ with respect to its delay arguments to get

$\begin{array}{l}\frac{\text{d}\lambda }{\text{d}{\tau }_2}\left(\frac{\text{d}H}{\text{d}\lambda }{\text{e}}^{-\lambda {\tau }_1}+\frac{\text{d}P}{\text{d}\lambda }+\frac{\text{d}Q}{\text{d}\lambda }{\text{e}}^{-\lambda {\tau }_2}+\frac{\text{d}W}{\text{d}\lambda }{\text{e}}^{-2\lambda {\tau }_1}+\frac{\text{d}G}{\text{d}\lambda }{\text{e}}^{-2\lambda {\tau }_2}\right)\\ +\frac{\text{d}\lambda }{\text{d}{\tau }_2}\left(H{\text{e}}^{-\lambda {\tau }_1}\left(-{\tau }_1\right)+Q{\text{e}}^{-\lambda {\tau }_2}\left(-{\tau }_2\right)+W{\text{e}}^{-2\lambda {\tau }_1}\left(-2{\tau }_1\right)+G{\text{e}}^{-2\lambda {\tau }_2}\left(-2{\tau }_2\right)\right)\\ +Q{\text{e}}^{-\lambda {\tau }_2}\left(-\lambda \right)+G{\text{e}}^{-2\lambda {\tau }_2}\left(-2\lambda \right)=0\end{array}$ (2.8)

Therefore, we have

$\begin{array}{c}\frac{1}{\frac{\text{d}\lambda }{\text{d}{\tau }_2}}=\frac{\frac{\text{d}H}{\text{d}\lambda }{\text{e}}^{-\lambda {\tau }_1}+\frac{\text{d}P}{\text{d}\lambda }+\frac{\text{d}Q}{\text{d}\lambda }{\text{e}}^{-\lambda {\tau }_2}+\frac{\text{d}W}{\text{d}\lambda }{\text{e}}^{-2\lambda {\tau }_1}+\frac{\text{d}G}{\text{d}\lambda }{\text{e}}^{-2\lambda {\tau }_2}}{Q{\text{e}}^{-\lambda {\tau }_2}\left(-\lambda \right)+G{\text{e}}^{-2\lambda {\tau }_2}\left(-2\lambda \right)}\\ +\frac{H{\text{e}}^{-\lambda {\tau }_1}\left(-{\tau }_1\right)+Q{\text{e}}^{-\lambda {\tau }_2}\left(-{\tau }_2\right)+W{\text{e}}^{-2\lambda {\tau }_1}\left(-2{\tau }_1\right)+G{\text{e}}^{-2\lambda {\tau }_2}\left(-2{\tau }_2\right)}{Q{\text{e}}^{-\lambda {\tau }_2}\left(-\lambda \right)+G{\text{e}}^{-2\lambda {\tau }_2}\left(-2\lambda \right)}\end{array}$ (2.9)

Noticed if stretch along Hopf line, with given $\omega$, one gets

$F\left(\psi \right)=0,G\left(\varphi ,\psi \right)=0$ (2.10)

that is, it easily computes that

$\{\begin{array}{ll}{\psi }_m={\psi }_0\left(\omega \right)+2m\pi \hfill & \Rightarrow {\tau }_{2,m}\left(\omega \right)=\frac{\psi }{\omega }\hfill \\ {\varphi }_n={\varphi }_0\left(\omega \right)+2n\pi \hfill & \Rightarrow {\tau }_{1,n}\left(\omega \right)=\frac{\varphi }{\omega }\hfill \end{array}$ (2.11)

wherein, from Equation (2.10), one calculates $\psi ,\varphi$ to get ${\psi }_0=\mathrm{mod}\left(\psi ,2\pi \right)$, ${\varphi }_0=\mathrm{mod}\left(\varphi ,2\pi \right)$. Hence, not mazed by Hopf line, we have

$\text{Δ}\left(i\omega ,{\tau }_{1,n},{\tau }_{2,m}\right)=0$ (2.12)

If differential Equation (2.12) with respect to $\omega$, we also have

$\begin{array}{l}i\left(\frac{\text{d}H}{\text{d}\lambda }{\text{e}}^{-i\varphi }+\frac{\text{d}P}{\text{d}\lambda }+\frac{\text{d}Q}{\text{d}\lambda }{\text{e}}^{-i\psi }+\frac{\text{d}W}{\text{d}\lambda }{\text{e}}^{-i2\varphi }+\frac{\text{d}G}{\text{d}\lambda }{\text{e}}^{-i2\psi }\right)\\ +i\left(H{\text{e}}^{-i\varphi }\left(-{\tau }_1\right)+Q{\text{e}}^{-i\psi }\left(-{\tau }_2\right)+W{\text{e}}^{-i2\varphi }\left(-2{\tau }_1\right)+G{\text{e}}^{-i2\psi }\left(-2{\tau }_2\right)\right)\\ +{{\tau }^{\prime }}_{2,m}\left(\omega \right)\left(Q{\text{e}}^{-i\psi }\left(-i\omega \right)+G{\text{e}}^{-i2\psi }\left(-2i\omega \right)\right)\\ +{{\tau }^{\prime }}_{1,n}\left(\omega \right)\left(H{\text{e}}^{-i\varphi }\left(-i\omega \right)+W{\text{e}}^{-i2\varphi }\left(-2i\omega \right)\right)=0\end{array}$ (2.13)

Furthermore, one calculates the transversal condition from Equation (2.9) to get

$\begin{array}{l}\delta \left(\omega ,{\tau }_{1,n},{\tau }_{2,m}\right)={\frac{1}{\frac{\text{d}\lambda }{\text{d}{\tau }_2}}|}_{\lambda =i\omega }\\ =\frac{\frac{\text{d}H}{\text{d}\lambda }{\text{e}}^{-i\varphi }+\frac{\text{d}P}{\text{d}\lambda }+\frac{\text{d}Q}{\text{d}\lambda }{\text{e}}^{-i\psi }+\frac{\text{d}W}{\text{d}\lambda }{\text{e}}^{-i2\varphi }+\frac{\text{d}G}{\text{d}\lambda }{\text{e}}^{-i2\psi }}{Q{\text{e}}^{-i\psi }\left(-i\omega \right)+G{\text{e}}^{-i2\psi }\left(-2i\omega \right)}\\ +\frac{H{\text{e}}^{-\lambda {\tau }_1}\left(-{\tau }_1\right)+Q{\text{e}}^{-\lambda {\tau }_2}\left(-{\tau }_2\right)+W{\text{e}}^{-2\lambda {\tau }_1}\left(-2{\tau }_1\right)+G{\text{e}}^{-2\lambda {\tau }_2}\left(-2{\tau }_2\right)}{Q{\text{e}}^{-i\psi }\left(-i\omega \right)+G{\text{e}}^{-i2\psi }\left(-2i\omega \right)}\\ =-\frac{{{\tau }^{\prime }}_{2,m}\left(\omega \right)\left(Q{\text{e}}^{-i\psi }\left(-i\omega \right)+G{\text{e}}^{-i2\psi }\left(-2i\omega \right)\right)}{iQ{\text{e}}^{-i\psi }\left(-i\omega \right)+G{\text{e}}^{-i2\psi }\left(-2i\omega \right)}\\ -\frac{{{\tau }^{\prime }}_{1,n}\left(\omega \right)\left(H{\text{e}}^{-i\varphi }\left(-i\omega \right)+W{\text{e}}^{-i2\varphi }\left(-2i\omega \right)\right)}{iQ{\text{e}}^{-i\psi }\left(-i\omega \right)+G{\text{e}}^{-i2\psi }\left(-2i\omega \right)}\end{array}$

Therefore, one gets

$\begin{array}{c}\Re \left(\delta \left(\omega ,{\tau }_{1,n},{\tau }_{2,m}\right)\right)=-\Re \frac{{{\tau }^{\prime }}_{1,n}\left(\omega \right)\left(H{\text{e}}^{-i\varphi }-2W{\text{e}}^{-i2\varphi }\right)}{i\left(Q{\text{e}}^{-i\psi }-2G{\text{e}}^{-i2\psi }\right)}\\ =-{{\tau }^{\prime }}_{1,n}\left(\omega \right)\Re \frac{\left(H{\text{e}}^{-i\varphi }-2W{\text{e}}^{-i2\varphi }\right)\left(-i\left(\bar{Q}{\text{e}}^{i\psi }-2\bar{G}{\text{e}}^{i2\psi }\right)\right)}{{\left|i\left(Q{\text{e}}^{-i\psi }-2G{\text{e}}^{-i2\psi }\right)\right|}^2}\end{array}$ (2.14)

Based on the above discussion, one concludes that Hopf bifurcation occurs at $\left({\tau }_{1,n},{\tau }_{2,m}\right)$ if and only if the transversal condition is satisfied with $\Re \left(\delta \left(\omega ,{\tau }_{1,n},{\tau }_{2,m}\right)\right)\ne 0$. The periodical solution bifurcates from Hopf point is simulated and stability analysis of periodical solution is carried out by normal form computation method in the next section.

As discussed in Section 2, Hopf bifurcation occurs at $\left({\tau }_1^{\text{*}},{\tau }_2^{\text{*}}\right)$ point while a pair of imaginary roots cross the imaginary axis with the transversal condition being satisfied. We apply Lyapunov-Schmidt reduction method combined with center manifold theory to compute the normal form near Hopf point. The perturbation method is explored to investigate the bifurcating direction of Hopf bifurcation and analyze the stability of the bifurcating periodical solution.

Set ${\tau }_1={\tau }_1^{\text{*}}+ϵ{\tau }_m,{\tau }_2={\tau }_2^{\text{*}}+ϵ{\tau }_n$, and rewrite system (1.1) to its third trunction form as

$\begin{array}{c}{u^{\prime }}_1\left(t\right)=-b_1{u}_1\left(t\right)+c_1\left(u_1\left(t-{\tau }_1\right)-\frac{1}{3}{u}_1{\left(t-{\tau }_1\right)}^3\right)+a_{12}{c}_2{\displaystyle {\int }_0^{{\tau }_2}{u}_2}\left(t-{\tau }_2+s\right)\text{d}s\\ -\frac{1}{3}{a}_{12}{c}_2{\displaystyle {\int }_0^{{\tau }_2}{u}_2{\left(t-{\tau }_2+s\right)}^3\text{d}s}+o\left(\Vert u_1^3\Vert ,\Vert u_2^3\Vert ,\Vert u_1{\left(t-{\tau }_1\right)}^3\Vert ,\Vert u_2{\left(t-{\tau }_2\right)}^3\Vert \right)\\ {u^{\prime }}_2\left(t\right)=-b_2{u}_2\left(t\right)+a_{21}{\displaystyle {\int }_0^{{\tau }_2}{c}_1}\left(u_1\left(t-{\tau }_2+s\right)-\frac{1}{3}{u}_1{\left(t-{\tau }_2+s\right)}^3\right)\text{d}s\\ +c_2\left(u_2\left(t-{\tau }_1\right)-\frac{1}{3}{u}_2{\left(t-{\tau }_1\right)}^3\right)+o\left(\Vert u_1^3\Vert ,\Vert u_2^3\Vert ,\Vert u_1{\left(t-{\tau }_1\right)}^3\Vert ,\Vert u_2{\left(t-{\tau }_2\right)}^3\Vert \right)\end{array}$(3.1)

Based on the fundamental theory of DDEs, Equations (3.1) is defined on its phase space $\varphi \in C\left(\left[-\tau ,0\right]\to R^2\right)$, which is a Banach space with the super norm $\Vert \varphi \Vert ={\max }_{-\tau \le \theta \le 0}\left|\varphi \left(\theta \right)\right|$ with $\tau =\max \left({\tau }_1,{\tau }_2\right)$. Furthermore, we write Equations (3.1) into the following nonlinear system

$\left(\begin{array}{c}{{\varphi }^{\prime }}_1\left(0\right)\\ {{\varphi }^{\prime }}_2\left(0\right)\end{array}\right)=ℒ\left(ϵ\right)\left(\begin{array}{c}{\varphi }_1\\ {\varphi }_2\end{array}\right)+F\left({\varphi }_1,{\varphi }_2\right)$ (3.2)

with the linearized version

$ℒ\left(0\right)\left(\begin{array}{c}{\varphi }_1\\ {\varphi }_2\end{array}\right)=\left(\begin{array}{c}-b_1{\varphi }_1\left(0\right)+c_1{\varphi }_1\left(-{\tau }_1^{\text{*}}\right)+a_{12}{c}_2{\displaystyle {\int }_0^{{\tau }_2^{\text{*}}}{\varphi }_2\left(-{\tau }_2^{\text{*}}+s\right)\text{d}s}\\ -b_2{\varphi }_2\left(0\right)+a_{21}{c}_1{\displaystyle {\int }_0^{{\tau }_2^{\text{*}}}{\varphi }_1\left(-{\tau }_2^{\text{*}}+s\right)\text{d}s}+c_2{\varphi }_2\left(-{\tau }_1^{\text{*}}\right)\end{array}\right)$ (3.3)

with its perturbation part

$\begin{array}{c}ℒ\left(ϵ\right)\left(\begin{array}{c}{\varphi }_1\\ {\varphi }_2\end{array}\right)=ℒ\left(0\right)\left(\begin{array}{c}{\varphi }_1\\ {\varphi }_2\end{array}\right)+c_1\left(\begin{array}{c}{\varphi }_1\left(-{\tau }_1\right)-{\varphi }_1\left(-{\tau }_1^{\text{*}}\right)\\ {\varphi }_2\left(-{\tau }_1\right)-{\varphi }_2\left(-{\tau }_1^{\text{*}}\right)\end{array}\right)\\ +\left(\begin{array}{c}{a}_{12}{c}_2\left({\displaystyle {\int }_0^{{\tau }_2}{\varphi }_2\left(-{\tau }_2+s\right)\text{d}s}-{\displaystyle {\int }_0^{{\tau }_2^{\text{*}}}{\varphi }_2\left(-{\tau }_2^{\text{*}}+s\right)\text{d}s}\right)\\ a_{21}{c}_1\left({\displaystyle {\int }_0^{{\tau }_2}{\varphi }_1\left(-{\tau }_2+s\right)\text{d}s}-{\displaystyle {\int }_0^{{\tau }_1^{\text{*}}}{\varphi }_1\left(-{\tau }_2^{\text{*}}+s\right)\text{d}s}\right)\end{array}\right)\end{array}$ (3.4)

We also express the nonlinear part as the following

$\begin{array}{l}F\left({\varphi }_1,{\varphi }_2\right)=\left(\begin{array}{c}-\frac{1}{3}{c}_1{\varphi }_1{\left(-{\tau }_1^{\text{*}}\right)}^3-\frac{1}{3}{a}_{12}{c}_2{\displaystyle {\int }_0^{{\tau }_2^{\text{*}}}{\varphi }_2{\left(-{\tau }_2^{\text{*}}+s\right)}^3\text{d}s}\\ -\frac{1}{3}{a}_{21}{\displaystyle {\int }_0^{{\tau }_2^{\text{*}}}{\varphi }_1{\left(-{\tau }_2^{\text{*}}+s\right)}^3\text{d}s}-\frac{1}{3}{c}_2{\varphi }_2{\left(-{\tau }_1^{\text{*}}\right)}^3\end{array}\right)\hfill \end{array}$ (3.5)

According to the property of DDEs, solution of Equation (3.1) is continuous on Banach space $C=C\left(\left[-\tau ,0\right],R^2\right)$. With few discontinuity jumps, the solution operator is differentiable on the extended space $BC=C\left(\left[-\tau ,0\right],R^2\right)$. We define solution with its domain as

$\left\{\varphi \in C\left(\left[-\tau ,0\right],R^2\right),{\varphi }^{\prime }\left(\theta \right)\in BC,\mathcal{A}\varphi ={\varphi }^{\prime }\left(\theta \right)+X_0\phi \right\}$

with $X_0$ is the fundamental solution matrix.

Consider the linear operator (3.2), it’s an infinitesimal generator of the strong continuous semigroup in phase space $BC$, and we define the new linear opeartor $\mathcal{A}\left(ϵ\right):BC\to BC$ and its adjoint operator $A^{\text{*}}\left(ϵ\right):B{C}^{\text{*}}\to B{C}^{\text{*}}$ wherein $B{C}^{\text{*}}=C\left(\left[0,\tau \right],R^2\right)$, that is

$\mathcal{A}\left(ϵ\right)\varphi =\{\begin{array}{ll}{\varphi }^{\prime }\left(\theta \right),\hfill & \text{for}-\tau \le \theta <0,\hfill \\ ℒ\left(0\right)\varphi +X_0\left({\varphi }^{\prime }\left(0\right)-ℒ\left(0\right)\varphi \right),\hfill & \text{for}\theta =0\hfill \end{array}$ (3.6)

and

${\mathcal{A}}^{\text{*}}\left(0\right)\psi =\{\begin{array}{ll}-{\psi }^{\prime }\left(-s\right),\hfill & \text{for}0\le s\le \tau ,\hfill \\ {ℒ}^{\text{*}}\left(0\right)\psi ,\hfill & \text{for}s=0\hfill \end{array}$ (3.7)

Based on Reize theorem, there exists the bounded variation matrix $\eta \left(\theta \right)$ to represent

$ℒ\left(0\right)\varphi ={\displaystyle {\int }_{-\tau }^0\text{d}\eta \left(\theta \right)\varphi \left(\theta \right)}$ (3.8)

and

${ℒ}^{\text{*}}\left(0\right)\psi ={\displaystyle {\int }_{-\tau }^0\text{d}{\eta }^{\text{T}}\left(-s\right)\psi \left(-s\right)}$ (3.9)

For $\varphi \in C\left(\left[-\tau ,0\right],R^2\right)$, $\psi \in C\left(\left[0,\tau \right],R^2\right)$, we define the inner product by its bilinear form

$\langle \psi ,\varphi \rangle ={\bar{\psi }}^{\text{T}}\left(0\right)\varphi \left(0\right)-{\displaystyle {\int }_{-\tau }^0{\bar{\psi }}^{\text{T}}\left(\xi -\theta \right)\text{d}\eta \left(\theta \right)\varphi \left(xi\right)\text{d}\xi }$ (3.10)

Set $U={\left(x,y\right)}^{\text{T}}$, for $-\tau \le \theta \le 0$, with definition $U\left(t+\theta \right)=U_t\left(\theta \right)$, Equation (3.1) can be written into its differential operator form

${U^{\prime }}_t\left(\theta \right)=\mathcal{A}{U}_t\left(\theta \right)+ℛU_t\left(\theta \right),\text{for}-\tau \le \theta \le 0$ (3.11)

The reduction technique by using Schimdt-Lyapunov method is to project the solution onto the center manifold. Considering the linear version of differential operator (3.3), Hopf bifurcation occurs at $ϵ=0$, and the associated characteristic roots set is finite which is denoted as $\Lambda =\left\{i\omega ,-i\omega \right\}$ as verified in Section 2. With the assumption of other eigenvalues having negative real parts, the phase space can be appended onto its center manifold. Hence the eigenspace is decomposed into the center subspace $P$ associated with eigenvalues of $\text{Λ}$ and its complementary space is represented by $Q$. We suppose the eigenspace $P$ is spanned by $P=span\left\{q\left(\theta \right),\bar{q}\left(\theta \right)\right\}$, $-\tau \le \theta \le 0$,where eigen vector $q\left(\theta \right)$ and its conjugate vector $\bar{q}\left(\theta \right)$ are respectively satisfied

$\mathcal{A}q\left(\theta \right)=i\omega q\left(\theta \right),\mathcal{A}\bar{q}\left(\theta \right)=-i\omega \bar{q}\left(\theta \right)$ (3.12)

We represent the eigenbasis $\Phi \left(\theta \right)=\left(q\left(\theta \right),\bar{q}\left(\theta \right)\right)$, and correspondingly, the eigenbasis $\Psi \left(s\right)$ of the conjugate linear operator ${\mathcal{A}}^{\text{*}}\left(0\right)$ is denoted as $\Psi \left(s\right)=\left(p\left(s\right),\bar{p}\left(s\right)\right)$ given that

${\mathcal{A}}^{*}\left(0\right)p\left(s\right)=i\omega p\left(s\right),{\mathcal{A}}^{*}\left(0\right)\bar{p}\left(s\right)=-i\omega \bar{p}\left(s\right)$ (3.13)

We also make the equality $\langle \Phi \left(\theta \right),\Psi \left(s\right)\rangle =I$ satisfied.

Based on the Lyapunov-Schmidt reduction technique, the solution of the differential operator equation $U_t$ is decomposed into the direct summation of center space and its complementary space, that is

$U_t=zq\left(\theta \right)+\bar{z}\bar{q}\left(\theta \right)+y_t$ (3.14)

since $C=P\oplus Q$. Therefore, by defining the projection operator $\Pi :C\to P$, we have $\Pi U_t=\langle \Psi ,U_t\rangle \Phi$, to get

$Z^{\prime }=BZ+{\bar{\Psi }}^{\text{T}}\left(0\right)X_0\left({\varphi }^{\prime }\left(0\right)-L\left(0\right)\varphi \right)+{\bar{\Psi }}^{\text{T}}\left(0\right)X_0ℛ\left(\varphi \right)$ (3.15)

with $B=\left(\begin{array}{cc}i\omega & 0\\ 0& -i\omega \end{array}\right)$ and $Z={\left(z_1,z_2\right)}^{\text{T}}$.

We also rewrite the linear system of (3.13) into

$\begin{array}{c}{Z}^{\prime }=BZ+c_1{\bar{\Psi }}^{\text{T}}\left(0\right)\left(\begin{array}{c}{\varphi }_1\left(-{\tau }_1\right)-{\varphi }_1\left(-{\tau }_1^{*}\right)\\ {\varphi }_2\left(-{\tau }_1\right)-{\varphi }_2\left(-{\tau }_1^{*}\right)\end{array}\right)\\ +{\bar{\Psi }}^{\text{T}}\left(0\right)\left(\begin{array}{c}{a}_{12}{c}_2\left({\displaystyle {\int }_0^{{\tau }_2}{\varphi }_2\left(-{\tau }_2+s\right)\text{d}s}-{\displaystyle {\int }_0^{{\tau }_2^{\text{*}}}{\varphi }_2\left(-{\tau }_2^{\text{*}}+s\right)\text{d}s}\right)\\ a_{21}{c}_1\left({\displaystyle {\int }_0^{{\tau }_2}{\varphi }_1\left(-{\tau }_2+s\right)\text{d}s}-{\displaystyle {\int }_0^{{\tau }_1^{\text{*}}}{\varphi }_1\left(-{\tau }_2^{\text{*}}+s\right)\text{d}s}\right)\end{array}\right)\end{array}$ (3.16)

For example, we choose the eigenvectors

$q\left(\theta \right)=\left(\begin{array}{c}\frac{i}{\omega }{a}_{12}{c}_2\left({\text{e}}^{-i\omega {\tau }_2}-1\right)\\ b_1+i\omega -c_1{\text{e}}^{-i\omega {\tau }_1}\end{array}\right){\text{e}}^{i\omega \theta },p\left(s\right)=\left(\begin{array}{c}-\frac{i}{\omega }{a}_{21}{c}_1\left({\text{e}}^{i\omega {\tau }_2}-1\right)\\ b_1-i\omega -c_1{\text{e}}^{i\omega {\tau }_1}\end{array}\right){\text{e}}^{-i\omega s}$ (3.17)

for $-\tau \le \theta \le 0$, $0\le s\le \tau$. The linear system (3.14) is written into

$z^{\prime }\left(t\right)=i\omega z-zϵ\left(i{\tau }_m\left({\bar{p}}_1{q}_1+{\bar{p}}_2{q}_2\right)c_1\omega {\text{e}}^{-i\omega {\tau }_1}+{\tau }_n\left({\text{e}}^{i\omega {\tau }_2}-1\right)\left(a_{12}{c}_2{\bar{p}}_1{q}_2+a_{21}{c}_1{\bar{p}}_2{q}_1\right)\right)$(3.18)

and the nonlinear system is written as

$\begin{array}{c}{z}^{\prime }\left(t\right)=i\omega z+{\bar{p}}_1(-\frac{1}{3}{c}_1{\left(z{q}_1{\text{e}}^{-i\omega {\tau }_1^{\text{*}}}+\bar{z}{\bar{q}}_1{\text{e}}^{i\omega {\tau }_1^{\text{*}}}\right)}^3\\ -\frac{1}{3}{a}_{12}{c}_2{\displaystyle {\int }_0^{{\tau }_2^{\text{*}}}{\left(z{q}_2{\text{e}}^{-i\omega \left({\tau }_2^{\text{*}}-s\right)}+\bar{z}{\bar{q}}_2{\text{e}}^{i\omega \left({\tau }_2^{\text{*}}-s\right)}\right)}^3\text{d}s})\\ +{\bar{p}}_2(-\frac{1}{3}{a}_{21}{\displaystyle {\int }_0^{{\tau }_2^{\text{*}}}{\left(z{q}_1{\text{e}}^{-i\omega \left({\tau }_2^{\text{*}}-s\right)}-\bar{z}{\bar{q}}_1{\text{e}}^{i\omega \left({\tau }_2^{\text{*}}-s\right)}\right)}^3\text{d}s}\\ -\frac{1}{3}{c}_2{\left(z{q}_2{\text{e}}^{-i\omega {\tau }_1^{\text{*}}}+\bar{z}{\bar{q}}_2{\text{e}}^{i\omega {\tau }_1^{\text{*}}}\right)}^3)\\ =i\omega z-\left({\bar{p}}_1{c}_1{q}_1^2{\bar{q}}_1+{\bar{p}}_2{c}_2{q}_2^2{\bar{q}}_2\right){\text{e}}^{-i\omega {\tau }_1}+\frac{i}{\omega }\left({\bar{p}}_1{a}_{12}{c}_2{\bar{q}}_2{q}_2^2+{\bar{p}}_2{a}_{21}{c}_1{\bar{q}}_1{q}_1^2\right)\\ -\frac{i}{\omega }\left({\bar{p}}_1{a}_{12}{c}_2{q}_2^2{\bar{q}}_2+a_{21}{\bar{p}}_2{\bar{q}}_1{c}_1{q}_1^2\right){\text{e}}^{-i\omega {\tau }_2}\\ =i\omega z+f_{21}{z}^2\bar{z}\end{array}$ (3.19)

We also have

${y^{\prime }}_t\left(\theta \right)={U^{\prime }}_t\left(\theta \right)-<\Psi ,{U^{\prime }}_t\left(\theta \right)\Phi \left(\theta \right)=\mathcal{A}{y}_t+ℛ\left(\varphi \right)-{\bar{\Psi }}^{\text{T}}\left(0\right)X_0ℛ\left(\varphi \right)$ (3.20)

With the above discussion, we have the dimensional reduction system

$z^{\prime }\left(t\right)=i\omega z+ϵ\alpha z+f_{21}{z}^2\bar{z}$ (3.21)

with

$\begin{array}{l}\alpha =-\left(i{\tau }_m\left({\bar{p}}_1{q}_1+{\bar{p}}_2{q}_2\right)c_1\omega {\text{e}}^{-i\omega {\tau }_1}+{\tau }_n\left({\text{e}}^{i\omega {\tau }_2}-1\right)\left(a_{12}{c}_2{\bar{p}}_1{q}_2+a_{21}{c}_1{\bar{p}}_2{q}_1\right)\right)\\ f_{21}=-\left({\bar{p}}_1{c}_1{q}_1^2{\bar{q}}_1+{\bar{p}}_2{c}_2{q}_2^2{\bar{q}}_2\right){\text{e}}^{-i\omega {\tau }_1}+\frac{i}{\omega }\left({\bar{p}}_1{a}_{12}{c}_2{\bar{q}}_2{q}_2^2+{\bar{p}}_2{a}_{21}{c}_1{\bar{q}}_1{q}_1^2\right)\\ -\frac{i}{\omega }\left({\bar{p}}_1{a}_{12}{c}_2{q}_2^2{\bar{q}}_2+a_{21}{\bar{p}}_2{\bar{q}}_1{c}_1{q}_1^2\right){\text{e}}^{-i\omega {\tau }_2}\end{array}$

with $a_{12}=1$, $a_{21}=1.2$, $c_1=-2$, $c_2=0.6023012058$, $\omega =1.7197$, ${\tau }_1=0.7850148049$, ${\tau }_2=1.141869341$, $b_1=0.1$, $b_2=0.1$, we compute $\alpha =\left(1.775180730+3.921586787i\right)ϵ{\tau }_m+\left(-1.465601884+1.222555424i\right){\tau }_n$, and $l_1\left(0\right)=-0.1949329832+0.4889169011\text{e}-1i$. Henceafter, the stable periodical solution bifurcates from Hopf point. The continued periodical solutions by varying two-time delays is shown in Figure 3 .

For system (1.3), we also simulate torus solution by increasing timed delay ${\tau }_2$, as shown in Figure 4 . The asymmetry solution of system (1.3) is computed by DDE23 software. The chosen parameter are listed as ${\tau }_1=1.9$ and ${\tau }_2=13.9,14.9,15.9,16.9,17.9,18.9$ respectively.

As discussed in Section 2, Hopf bifurcation occurs with the corresponding transversal condition being satisfied, and the periodical oscillation solution arise. We simulate the periodical solutions both in time series solution and phase portraits as system (1.2) loss stability underlying Hopf bifurcation. Some novel periodical solutions with spatial symmetry are simulated which inspire us the enthusiasm to pay attention to the continuation of periodical solutions further. Whether the spatial symmetry property can be continued with doubly period or quadruple period? DDE-Biftool is artificial mathematical software that analyzes system bifurcation behavior. Herein we apply DDE-Biftool to continue periodical solutions of system (1.2) with multiple period. Firstly, we use DDE23 to simulate the spatial symmetrical solution with doubly and quadruple period, which can often be progressed with Runga-Kutta algorithm too. Both the time series solution and phase portraits of symmetrical solutions are shown in Figure 3 . With fixed parameter $a_{12}=1$,

$a_{21}=1.2$, $c_1=-2$, $c_2=1.2$ and time delays ${\tau }_1=1.9$, ${\tau }_2=2.2$, the doubly period solutions are observed, however the quadruple solution is found with ${\tau }_1=1.3$, ${\tau }_2=2.8$.