Parabolic bursting in an excitable system coupled with a slow oscillation

We investigate the interaction of an excitable system with a slow oscillation. Under robust and general assumptions compatible with the more stringent assumptions usually made about excitable systems, we show that such a coupled system can display bursting, i.e. a stable solution in which some variable undergoes rapid oscillations followed by a period of quiescence, with both oscillation and quiescence continually repeated. Under a further weak condition, the bursting is “parabolic”, i.e. the local frequency of the fast oscillation increases and then decreases within a burst. The technique in this paper involves nonlinear changes of coordinates which transform the equations into ones which are closely related to Hill’s equation.