Using spatial domain techniques developed by the authors and Myunghyun Oh in the context of parabolic conservation laws, we establish under a natural set of spectral stability conditions nonlinear asymptotic stability with decay at Gaussian rate of spatially periodic traveling-waves of systems of reaction diffusion equations. In the case that wave-speed is identically zero for all periodic solutions, we recover and slightly sharpen a well-known result of Schneider obtained by renormalization/Bloch transform techniques; by the same arguments, we are able to treat the open case of nonzero wave-speeds to which Schneider's renormalization techniques do not appear to apply
We prove the existence of a traveling wave solution for a boundary reaction diffusion equation when the reaction term is the combustion nonlinearity with ignition temperature. A key role in the proof is plaid by an explicit formula for traveling wave solutions of a free boundary problem obtained as singular limit for the reaction-diffusion equation (the so-called high energy activation energy limit). This explicit formula, which is interesting in itself, also allows us to get an estimate on the decay at infinity of the traveling wave (which turns out to be faster than the usual exponential dec…
This paper is concerned with the traveling waves of delayed reaction-diffusion systems where the reaction function possesses the mixed quasimonotonicity property. By the so-called monotone iteration scheme and Schauder's fixed point theorem, it is shown that if the system has a pair of coupled upper and lower solutions, then there exists at least a traveling wave solution. More precisely, we reduce the existence of traveling waves to the existence of an admissible pair of coupled quasi-upper and quasi-lower solutions which are easy to construct in practice.
Based on a recent work on traveling waves in spatially nonlocal reaction-diffusion equations, we investigate the existence of traveling fronts in reaction-diffusion equations with a memory term. We will explain how such memory terms can arise from reduction of reaction-diffusion systems if the diffusion constants of the other species can be neglected. In particular, we show that two-scale homogenization of spatially periodic systems can induce spatially homogeneous systems with temporal memory. The existence of fronts is proved using comparison principles as well as a reformulation trick invol…
We prove existence, uniqueness, and stability of transition fronts (generalized traveling waves) for reaction-diffusion equations in cylindrical domains with general inhomogeneous ignition reactions. We also show uniform convergence of solutions with exponentially decaying initial data to time translates of the front. In the case of stationary ergodic reactions the fronts are proved to propagate with a deterministic positive speed. Our results extend to reaction-advection-diffusion equations with periodic advection and diffusion.
In this paper we will establish nonlinear a priori lower and upper bounds for the solutions to a large class of equations which arise from the study of traveling wave solutions of reaction-diffusion equations, and we will apply our nonlinear bounds to the Lotka-Volterra system of two competing species as examples. The idea used in a series of papers \cite{NBMP-Discrete,JDE-16,CPAA-16,DCDS-B-18,NBMP-n-species,DCDS-A-17} for the establishment of the linear N-barrier maximum principle will also be used in the proof.
We prove the existence and uniqueness of a traveling front and of its speed for the homogeneous heat equation in the half-plane with a Neumann boundary reaction term of non-balanced bistable type or of combustion type. We also establish the monotonicity of the front and, in the bistable case, its behavior at infinity. In contrast with the classical bistable interior reaction model, its behavior at the side of the invading state is of power type, while at the side of the invaded state its decay is exponential. These decay results rely on the construction of a family of explicit bistable traveli…
We consider reaction-diffusion equations that are stochastically forced by a small multiplicative noise term. We show that spectrally stable traveling wave solutions to the deterministic system retain their orbital stability if the amplitude of the noise is sufficiently small. By applying a stochastic phase-shift together with a time-transform, we obtain a quasi-linear SPDE that describes the fluctuations from the primary wave. We subsequently follow the semigroup approach developed by Hamster and Hupkes in 2017 to handle the nonlinear stability question. The main novel feature is that we no l…
By employing the N-barrier method developed in the paper, we establish a new N-barrier maximum principle for diffusive Lotka-Volterra systems of two competing species. As an application of this maximum principle, we show under certain conditions, the existence and nonexistence of traveling waves solutions for systems of three competing species. In addition, new $(1,0,0)$-$(u^{\ast},v^{\ast},0)$ waves are given in terms of the tanh function provided that the parameters satisfy certain conditions.
This paper deals with the existence of traveling fronts guided by the medium for a KPP reaction-diffusion equation coming from a model in population dynamics in which there is spatial spreading as well as genetic mutation of a quantitative genetic trait that has a locally preferred value. The goal is to understand spreading and invasions in this heterogeneous context. We prove the existence of a threshold value on the existence of a nonzero asymptotic profile (a stationary limiting solution). When a nonzero asymptotic profile exists, we prove the existence of a traveling front. This allows us …
We consider a discrete version of reaction-diffusion equations. A typical example is the fully overdamped Frenkel-Kontorova model, where the velocity is proportional to the force. We also introduce an additional exterior force denoted by $σ$. For general discrete and fully nonlinear dynamics, we study traveling waves of velocity $c=c(σ)$ depending on the parameter $σ$. Under certain assumptions, we show properties of the velocity diagram $c(σ)$ for $σ\in [σ^-,σ^+]$. We show that the velocity $c$ is nondecreasing in $σ\in (σ^-,σ^+)$ in the bistable regime, with vertical branches $c\ge c^+$ for …
This paper establishes the spectral stability in exponentially weighted spaces of smooth traveling monotone fronts for reaction diffusion equations of Fisher-KPP type with nonlinear degenerate diffusion coefficient. It is assumed that the former is degenerate, that is, it vanishes at zero, which is one of the equilibrium points of the reaction. A parabolic regularization technique is introduced in order to locate a subset of the compression spectrum of the linearized operator around the wave, whereas the point spectrum is proved to be stable with the use of energy estimates. Detailed asymptoti…
In this paper we consider a semilinear parabolic equation in an infinite cylinder. The spatially varying nonlinearity is such that it connects two (spatially independent) bistable nonlinearities in a compact set in space. We prove that, given such a setting, a traveling wave obeying the equation with the one bistable nonlinearity and starting at the respective side of the cylinder, will converge to a traveling wave solution prescribed by the nonlinearity on the other side.
In this note, we give constructive upper and lower bounds for the minimal speed of propagation of traveling waves for non-local delayed reaction-diffusion equation.
We consider the semi linear Fisher-Kolmogorov-Petrovski-Piscounov equation for the advance of an advantageous gene in biology. Its non-smooth reaction function $f(u)$ allows for the introduction of travelling waves with a new profile. We study existence, uniqueness, and long-time asymptotic behavior of the solutions $u(x,t)$, $(x,t)\in \mathbb{R}\times \mathbb{R}_+$. We prove also the existence and uniqueness (up to a spatial shift) of a travelling wave $U$. Our main result is the uniform convergence (for $x\in \mathbb{R}$) of every solution $u(x,t)$ of the Cauchy problem to a single traveling…
This paper is concerned with the traveling wave solutions of a reaction-diffusion equation with state-dependent delay. When the birth function is monotone, the existence and nonexistence of monotone traveling wave solutions are established. When the birth function is not monotone, the minimal wave speed of nontrivial traveling wave solutions is obtained. The results are proved by the construction of upper and lower solutions and application of the fixed point theorem.
Analysis of the speed of propagation in parabolic operators is frequently carried out considering the minimal speed at which its traveling waves move. This value depends on the solution concept being considered. We analyze an extensive class of Fisher-type reaction-diffusion equations with flows in divergence form. We work with regular flows, which may not meet the standard elliptical conditions, but without other types of singularities. We show that the range of speeds at which classic traveling waves move is an interval unbounded to the right. Contrary to classic examples, the infimum may no…
We prove the existence of Kolmogorov-Petrovsky-Piskunov (KPP) type traveling fronts in space-time periodic and mean zero incompressible advection, and establish a variational (minimization) formula for the minimal speeds. We approach the existence by considering limit of a sequence of front solutions to a regularized traveling front equation where the nonlinearity is combustion type with ignition cut-off. The limiting front equation is degenerate parabolic and does not permit strong solutions, however, the necessary compactness follows from monotonicity of fronts and degenerate regularity. We …
Much has been studied on the spreading speed and traveling wave solutions for cooperative reaction-diffusion systems. In this paper, we shall establish the spreading speed for a large class of non-cooperative reaction-diffusion systems and characterize the spreading speed as the slowest speed of a family of non-constant traveling wave solutions. As an application, our results are applied to a partially cooperative system describing interactions between ungulates and grass.
Several stains of the intracellular parasitic bacterium Wolbachia limit severely the competence of the mosquitoes Aedes aegypti as a vector of dengue fever and possibly other arboviroses. For this reason, the release of mosquitoes infected by this bacterium in natural populations is presently considered a promising tool in the control of these diseases. Following works by M. Turelli [4] and subsequently M. Strugarek et al. [21, 22], we consider a simple scalar reaction-diffusion model describing the evolution of the proportion of infected mosquitoes, sufficient to reveal the bistable nature of…
We study a reaction-diffusion system of partial differential equations, which can be taken to be a basic model for criminal activity. We show that the assumption of a populations natural tendency towards crime significantly changes the long-time behavior of criminal activity patterns. Under the right assumptions on these natural tendencies we first show that there exists traveling wave solutions connecting zones with no criminal activity and zones with high criminal activity, known as hotspots. This corresponds to an invasion of criminal activity onto all space. Second, we study the problem of…
A unified geometric approach for the stability analysis of traveling pulse solutions for reaction-diffusion equations with skew-gradient structure has been established in a previous paper [9], but essentially no results have been found in the case of traveling front solutions. In this work, we will bridge this gap. For such cases, a Maslov index of the traveling wave is well-defined, and we will show how it can be used to provide the spectral information of the waves. As an application, we use the same index providing the exact number of unstable eigenvalues of the traveling front solutions of…
We consider a variational problem associated with the minimal speed of pulsating traveling waves of the equation $u_t=u_{xx}+b(x)(1-u)u$, $x\in{\mathbb R},\ t>0$, where the coefficient $b(x)$ is nonnegative and periodic in $x\in{\mathbb R}$ with a period $L>0$. It is known that there exists a quantity $c^*(b)>0$ such that a pulsating traveling wave with the average speed $c>0$ exists if and only if $c\geq c^*(b)$. The quantity $c^*(b)$ is the so-called minimal speed of pulsating traveling waves. In this paper, we study the problem of maximizing $c^*(b)$ by varying the coefficient $b(x)$ under …
This paper is concerned with the traveling wave solutions of delayed reaction-diffusion systems. By using Schauder's fixed point theorem, the existence of traveling wave solutions is reduced to the existence of generalized upper and lower solutions. Using the technique of contracting rectangles, the asymptotic behavior of traveling wave solutions for delayed diffusive systems is obtained. To illustrate our main results, the existence, nonexistence and asymptotic behavior of positive traveling wave solutions of diffusive Lotka-Volterra competition systems with distributed delays are established…
We study reaction-diffusion equations of various types in the half-space. For bistable reactions with Dirichlet boundary conditions, we prove conditional uniqueness: there is a unique nonzero bounded steady state which exceeds the bistable threshold on large balls. Moreover, solutions starting from sufficiently large initial data converge to this steady state as $t \to \infty$. For compactly supported initial data, the asymptotic speed of this propagation agrees with the unique speed $c_*$ of the one-dimensional traveling wave. We furthermore construct a traveling wave in the half-plane of spe…
In this paper we address the large-time behavior of solutions of bistable and multistable reaction-diffusion equations with discontinuities around the stable steady states. We show that the solution always converges to a special solution, which may either be a traveling wave in the bistable case, or more generally a terrace (i.e. a collection of stacked traveling waves with ordered speeds) in the multistable case.
For scalar reaction-diffusion equations, a traveling wave is a front which transforms a higher energy state to a lower energy state. The same is true for a system of equations with a gradient structure. At the core of this phenomenon, the wave propagation results in an invasion of an equilibrium state from a different one. This paper is aimed at two questions: (i) Can reaction-diffusion waves exhibit front propagation in both directions between two distinct equilibrium states? (ii) The co-existence of traveling fronts and pulses; a subject rarely studied. Working on a FitzHugh-Nagumo model wit…
In this paper, we consider two species chemotaxis systems with Lotka-Volterra competition reaction terms. Under appropriate conditions on the parameters in such a system, we establish the existence of traveling wave solutions of the system connecting two spatially homogeneous equilibrium solutions with wave speed greater than some critical number c*. We also show the non-existence of such traveling waves with speed less than some critical number c*_0, which is independent of the chemotaxis. Moreover, under suitable hypotheses on the coefficients of the reaction terms, we obtain explicit range …
Many systems in life sciences have been modeled by reaction-diffusion equations. However, under some circumstances, these biological systems may experience instantaneous and periodic perturbations (e.g. harvest, birth, release, fire events, etc) such that an appropriate formalism is necessary, using, for instance, impulsive reaction-diffusion equations. While several works tackled the issue of traveling waves for monotone reaction-diffusion equations and the computation of spreading speeds, very little has been done in the case of monotone impulsive reaction-diffusion equations. Based on vecto…
This paper studies both existence and spectral stability properties of bounded spatially periodic traveling wave solutions to a large class of scalar viscous balance laws in one space dimension with a reaction function of monostable or Fisher-KPP type. Under suitable structural assumptions, it is shown that this class of equations underlies two families of periodic waves. The first family consists of small amplitude waves with finite fundamental period which emerge from a Hopf bifurcation around a critical value of the wave speed. The second family pertains to arbitrarily large period waves wh…
We prove that the steady state of a class of multidimensional reaction-diffusion systems is asymptotically stable at the intersection of unweighted space and exponentially weighted Sobolev spaces, and pay particular attention to a special case, namely, systems of equations that arise in combustion theory. The steady-state solutions considered here are the end states of the traveling fronts associated with the systems, and thus the present results complement recent papers \cite{GLS1, GLS2, GLS3, GLSR, GLY} that study the stability of traveling fronts.
We consider the reaction-diffusion equation \begin{equation*} u_t=u_{xx}+μ\left(\int_ΩM(y,z)u(t,x,z)dz-u\right) + u\left(a(y)-\int_ΩK(y,z) u(t,x,z)dz\right) , \end{equation*} where $ u=u(t,x,y) $ stands for the density of a theoretical population with a spatial ($x\in\mathbb R$) and phenotypic ($y\inΩ\subset \mathbb R^n$) structure, $ M(y,z) $ is a mutation kernel acting on the phenotypic space, $ a(y) $ is a fitness function and $ K(y,z) $ is a competition kernel. Using a vanishing viscosity method, we construct measure-valued traveling waves for this equation, and present particular cases wh…
A nonlinear PDE featuring flux limitation effects together with those of the porous media equation (nonlinear Fokker-Planck) is presented in this paper. We analyze the balance of such diverse effects through the study of the existence and qualitative behavior of some admissible patterns, namely traveling wave solutions, to this singular reaction-difusion equation. We show the existence and qualitative behavior of different types of traveling waves: classical profiles for wave speeds high enough, and discontinuous waves that are reminiscent of hyperbolic shock waves when the wave speed lowers b…
Extending previous results of Oh--Zumbrun and Johnson--Zumbrun, we show that spectral stability implies linearized and nonlinear stability of spatially periodic traveling-wave solutions of viscous systems of conservation laws for systems of generic type, removing a restrictive assumption that wave speed be constant to first order along the manifold of nearby periodic solutions.
In this paper we prove the existence and uniqueness of the almost periodic semi- wave (traveling wave) solutions of KPP-Fisher equations with free boundaries in spatially almost periodic media.
We consider solutions of a scalar reaction-diffusion equation of the ignition type with a random, stationary and ergodic reaction rate. We show that solutions of the Cauchy problem spread with a deterministic rate in the long time limit. We also establish existence of generalized random traveling waves and of transition fronts in general heterogeneous media.
The paper is concerned with a singular limit for the bistable traveling wave problem in a very large class of two-species fully nonlinear parabolic systems with competitive reaction terms. Assuming existence of traveling waves and enough compactness, we derive and characterize the limiting problem. The assumptions and results are discussed in detail. The free boundary problem obtained at the limit is specified for important applications.
This paper establishes suficient conditions for the orbital stability of one-parameter spatially periodic traveling-wave solutions for one-dimensional dispersive equations. Our method of proof combines known techniques with some new ideas. As a consequence of our result, we give several applications for well known dispersive equations. Extension of the theory to regularized equations is also established.
We study multiplicity of the supercritical traveling front solutions for scalar reaction-diffusion equations in infinite cylinders which invade a linearly unstable equilibrium. These equations are known to possess traveling wave solutions connecting an unstable equilibrium to the closest stable equilibrium for all speeds exceeding a critical value. We show that these are, in fact, the only traveling front solutions in the considered problems for sufficiently large speeds. In addition, we show that other traveling fronts connecting to the unstable equilibrium may exist in a certain range of the…
We study some anisotropic heterogeneous nonlinear integral equations arising in epidemiology. We focus on the case where the heterogeneities are spatially periodic. In the first part of the paper, we show that the equations we consider exhibit a "threshold phenomenon". In the second part, we study the existence and non-existence of "traveling waves", and we provide a formula for the admissible speeds. In a third part, we apply our results to a spatial heterogeneous SIR model.
The notion of traveling wave, which typically refers to some particular spatio-temporal con- nections between two stationary states (typically, entire solutions keeping the same profile's shape through time), is essential in the mathematical analysis of propagation phenomena. They provide insight on the underlying dynamics, and an accurate description of large time behavior of large classes of solutions, as we will see in this paper. For instance, in an homogeneous framework, it is well-known that, given a fast decaying initial datum (for instance, compactly supported), the solution of a KPP t…
Traveling wave solutions of reaction-diffusion equations are well-studied for Lipschitz continuous monostable and bistable reaction functions. These special solutions play a key role in mathematical biology and in particular in the study of ecological invasions. However, if there are more than two stable steady states, the invasion phenomenon may become more intricate and involve intermediate steps, which leads one to consider not a single but a collection of traveling waves with ordered speeds. In this paper we show that, if the reaction function is discontinuous at the stable steady states, …
This paper is concerned with non-cooperative parabolic reaction--diffusion systems which share structural similarities with the scalar Fisher--KPP equation. In a previous paper, we established that these systems admit traveling wave solutions. It is then natural to investigate their asymptotic distributions. This is the main object of this paper. Non-cooperative KPP systems can model various phenomena where the following three mechanisms occur: local diffusion in space, linear cooperation and superlinear competition.
In this paper, the existence of a non-trivial, positive and bounded critical traveling wave solution of a diffusive disease model, whose reaction system has infinity many equilibria, is obtained for the first time. This gives an affirmative answer to an open problem left in [X. Wang, H. Wang, J. Wu, Traveling waves of diffusive predator-prey systems: disease outbreak propagation, Discrete Contin. Dyn. Syst. Ser. A 32 (2012) 3303-3324]. Our result shows that the critical traveling wave in this model is a mixed of front and pulse type.
This paper is concerned with the analysis of speed-up of reaction-diffusion-advection traveling fronts in infinite cylinders with periodic boundary conditions. The advection is a shear flow with a large amplitude and the reaction is nonnegative, with either positive or zero ignition temperature. The unique or minimal speeds of the traveling fronts are proved to be asymptotically linear in the flow amplitude as the latter goes to infinity, solving an open problem from \cite{b}. The asymptotic growth rate is characterized explicitly as the unique or minimal speed of traveling fronts for a limiti…
