Shaping the asymmetry of localized frequency-locking waves by a generalized forcing and implications to the inner ear


  Yuval Edri [1]  ,  Dolores Bozovic [2]  ,  Ehud Meron [1,3]  ,  Arik Yochelis [1,3]  
[1] Department of Solar Energy and Environmental Physics, Swiss Institute for Dryland Environmental and Energy Research, Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Sede Boqer Campus, 8499000 Midreshet Ben-Gurion, Israel
[2] Department of Physics and Astronomy and California NanoSystems Institute, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA
[3] Department of Physics, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 8410501 Beer Sheva, Israel

Frequency locking to an external forcing is a well-known phenomenon. In the auditory system, it results in a localized traveling wave, the shape of which is essential for efficient discrimination between incoming frequencies. An amplitude equation approach is used to show that the shape of the localized traveling wave depends crucially on the relative strength of additive versus parametric forcing components; the stronger the parametric forcing, the more asymmetric is the response profile and the sharper is the traveling-wave front. The analysis qualitatively captures the empirically observed regions of linear and nonlinear responses and highlights the potential significance of parametric forcing mechanisms in shaping the resonant response in the inner ear.

PRE 98, 020202 (2018) 

https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevE.98.020202