Frequency locking by external forcing in systems with rotational symmetry

We study locking of the modulation frequency of a relative periodic orbit in a general S ₁-equivariant system of ordinary differential equations under an external forcing of modulated wave type. Our main result describes the shape of the locking region in the three-dimensional space of the forcing parameters: intensity, wave frequency, and modulation frequency. The difference of the wave frequencies of the relative periodic orbit and the forcing is assumed to be large, and differences of modulation frequencies to be small. The intensity of the forcing is small in the generic case and can be large in the degenerate case, when the first order averaging vanishes. Applications are external electrical and/or optical forcing of self-pulsating states of lasers.