Prof. Sachin Bhalekar and his PhD student Deepa Gupta from the School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Hyderabad (UoH), recently worked on the fractional order model of the sunflower equation.  This equation describes the motion of the tip of a plant due to the transportation of enzymes under the influence of gravity. The proposed model contains two derivatives of fractional order and a time delay. Applied scientists widely use fractional derivatives to model the memory properties in the systems. Furthermore, one can choose the order of derivative that suits the experimental data.

 

 

These researchers provided explicit conditions for the stability of the equilibrium states and described various bifurcations in the system. Furthermore, they studied the chaos in the proposed model, which is an interesting phenomenon. The work is published in an internationally reputed journal, “The European Physical Journal Special Topics”. Springer publishes the journal and has an impact factor of 2.6.

 

 

The article is available https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjs/s11734-024-01356-3