Infinite subharmonic bifurcation in an SEIR epidemic model

Abstract

The existence of both periodic and aperiodic behavior in recurrent epidemics is now well-documented. In this paper, it is proven that for epidemic models that incur permanent immunity with seasonal variations in the contact rate, there exists an infinite number of stable subharmonic solutions. Random effects in the environment could perturb the state of the dynamics from the domain of attraction from one subharmonic to another, thus producing aperiodic levels of incidence.