Rate and memory effects in bifurcation-induced tipping

Abstract: A variation in the environment of a system, such as the temperature, the concentration of a chemical solution or the appearance of a magnetic field, may lead to a drift in one of the parameters. If the parameter crosses a bifurcation point, the system can tip from one attractor to another (bifurcation-induced tipping). Typically, this stability exchange occurs at a parameter value beyond the bifurcation value. This is what we call here the stability exchange shift. We study systematically how the shift is affected by the initial parameter value and its change rate. To that end, we present numerical and analytical results for different types of bifurcations and different paradigmatic systems. Finally, we deduce the scaling laws governing this phenomenon. We show that increasing the change rate and starting the drift further from the bifurcation can delay the tipping process. Furthermore, if the change rate is sufficiently small, the shift becomes independent of the initial condition (no memory) and the shift tends to zero as the square root of the change rate. Thus, the bifurcation diagram for the system with fixed parameters is recovered.