Stability and bifurcation analysis of a mathematical model for tumor–immune interaction with piecewise constant arguments of delay

In this paper, we propose and analyze a Lotka–Volterra competition like model which consists of system of differential equations with piecewise constant arguments of delay to study of interaction between tumor cells and Cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs). In order to get local and global behaviors of the system, we use Schur–Cohn criterion and constructed a Lyapunov function. Some algebraic conditions which satisfy local and global stability of the system are obtained. In addition, we investigate the possible bifurcation types for the system and observe that the system may undergo Neimark–Sacker bifurcation. Moreover, it is predicted a threshold value above which there is uncontrollable tumor growth, and below periodic solutions that leading to tumor dormant state occur.