Reaction-advection-diffusion equations, in periodic settings and with general type nonlinearities, admit a threshold known as the minimal speed of propagation. The minimal speed does not have an accessible formula when the nonlinearity is not of KPP type, for instance. The question becomes whether the minimal speed can be obtained through a linearization procedure or not. In this paper, we derive selection criteria for the minimal speed: a key feature of the nonlinear selection is unveiled. Moreover, we use upper/lower solution techniques in order to derive practical criteria determining the minimal speed in the presence of advection and a general type nonlinearilty.
We investigate the connection between the existence of an explicit travelling wave solution and the travelling wave with minimal speed in a scalar monostable reaction-diffusion equation.
We investigate in this paper propagation phenomena for the heterogeneous reaction-diffusion equation $\partial_t u -Δu = f(t,u)$, $x\in R^N$, $t\in\R$, where f=f(t,u) is a KPP monostable nonlinearity which depends in a general way on t. A typical f which satisfies our hypotheses is f(t,u)=m(t) u(1-u), with m bounded and having positive infimum. We first prove the existence of generalized transition waves (recently defined by Berestycki and Hamel, Shen) for a given class of speeds. As an application of this result, we obtain the existence of random transition waves when f is a random stationary…
In this paper, we study the dynamics of a two-species competition model with two different free boundaries in heterogeneous time-periodic environment, where the two species adopt a combination of random movement and advection upward or downward along the resource gradient. We show that the dynamics of this model can be classified into four cases, which forms a spreading-vanishing quartering. The notion of the minimal habitat size for spreading is introduced to determine if species can always spread. Rough estimates of the asymptotic spreading speed of free boundaries and the long time behavior…
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…
We consider reaction-diffusion equations with combustion-type non-linearities in two dimensions and study speed-up of their pulsating fronts by general periodic incompressible flows with a cellular structure. We show that the occurence of front speed-up in the sense $\lim_{A\to\infty} c_*(A)=\infty$, with $A$ the amplitude of the flow and $c_*(A)$ the (minimal) front speed, only depends on the geometry of the flow and not on the reaction function. In particular, front speed-up happens for KPP reactions if and only if it does for ignition reactions. We also show that the flows which achieve thi…
We consider absorbing chemical reactions in a fluid flow modeled by the coupled advection-reaction-diffusion equations. In these systems, the interplay between chemical diffusion and fluid transportation causes the enhanced dissipation phenomenon. We show that the enhanced dissipation time scale, together with the reaction coupling strength, determines the characteristic time scale of the reaction.
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.
In this paper, we construct approximations of the microscopic solution of a nonlinear reaction--diffusion equation in a domain consisting of two bulk-domains, which are separated by a thin layer with a periodic heterogeneous structure. The size of the heterogeneities and thickness of the layer are of order $ε$, where the parameter $ε$ is small compared to the length scale of the whole domain. In the limit $ε\to 0$, when the thin layer reduces to an interface $Σ$ separating two bulk domains, a macroscopic model with effective interface conditions across $Σ$ is obtained. Our approximations are o…
We study flow-induced enhancement of the speed of pulsating traveling fronts for reaction-diffusion equations, and quenching of reaction by fluid flows. We prove, for periodic flows in two dimensions and any combustion-type reaction, that the front speed is proportional to the square root of the (homogenized) effective diffusivity of the flow. We show that this result does not hold in three and more dimensions. We also prove conjectures from [1,3,11] for cellular flows, concerning the rate of speed-up of fronts and the minimal flow amplitude necessary to quench solutions with initial data of a…
Every mathematical model describing physical phenomena is an approximation to model reality, hence has its limitations. Depending on characteristic values of the variables in the model, different aspects of the model and, e.g., thermodynamic mechanisms have to be emphasised, or may be neglected in a reduced limit model. Within this paper, a heterogeneous catalysis system will be considered consisting of a bulk phase $Ω$ (chemical reactor) and an active surface $Σ= \partial Ω$ (catalytic surface), between which chemical substances are exchanged via adsorption (transport of mass from the bulk bo…
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.
We consider a mathematical model for heterogeneous catalysis in a finite three-dimensional pore of cylinder-like geometry, with the lateral walls acting as a catalytic surface. The system under consideration consists of a diffusion-advection system inside the bulk phase and a reaction-diffusion-sorption system modeling the processes on the catalytic wall and the exchange between bulk and surface. We assume Fickian diffusion with constant coefficients, sorption kinetics with linear growth bound and a network of chemical reactions which possesses a certain triangular structure. Our main result g…
Turing patterns in reaction-diffusion (RD) systems have classically been studied only in RD systems which do not explicitly depend on independent variables such as space. In practise, many systems for which Turing patterning is important are not homogeneous with ideal boundary conditions. In heterogeneous systems with stable steady states, the steady states are also necessarily heterogeneous which is problematic for applying the classical analysis. Whilst there has been some work done to extend Turing analysis to some heterogeneous systems, for many systems it is still difficult to determine i…
In this paper, we prove the existence of the spreading speed of nonlocal KPP equations in two cases: 1. The media is almost periodic and the kernel of diffusion is continuous; 2. The media is periodic and the diffusion is not continuous but weak irreducible. To do this, we develop the theory of generalized principal eigenvalues, the method homogenization and special Harnack's inequalities of nonlocal diffusion equations.
We determine the asymptotic spreading speed of the solutions of a Fisher-KPP reaction-diffusion equation, starting from compactly supported initial data, when the diffusion coefficient is a fixed bounded monotone profile that is shifted at a given forcing speed and satisfies a general uniform ellipticity condition. Depending on the monotony of the profile, we are able to characterize this spreading speed as a function of the forcing speed and the two linear spreading speeds associated to the asymptotic problems. Most notably, when the profile of the coefficient diffusion is increasing we show …
Derivation of macroscopic models for advection-diffusion processes in the presence of dominant heterogeneous (e.g., surface) reactions using homogenisation theory or volume averaging is often deemed unfeasible due to the strong coupling between scales that characterise such systems. In this work, we show how the upscaling can be carried out by applying and extending the methods presented in literature. The approach relies on the decomposition of the microscale concentration into a reactive component, given by the eigenfunction of the advection-diffusion operator, the associated eigenvalue whic…
We consider one-dimensional reaction-diffusion equations of Fisher-KPP type with random stationary ergodic coefficients. A classical result of Freidlin and Gartner [16] yields that the solutions of the initial value problems associated with compactly supported initial data admit a linear spreading speed almost surely. We use in this paper a new characterization of this spreading speed recently proved in [8] in order to investigate the dependence of this speed with respect to the heterogeneity of the diffusion and reaction terms. We prove in particular that adding a reaction term with null aver…
The determination of the speed of travelling fronts of the scalar reaction diffusion equation has been the subject of much study. Using different approaches seemingly disconnected variational principles have been established. The purpose of this work is to show the connection between them. For monostable reaction terms, we prove that a principle established by Hadeler and Rothe in 1975 and a second one by Benguria and Depassier in 1996 are logically equivalent, that is, either can be derived from the other. Two variational principles, formulated for arbitrary reaction terms, are shown to be re…
This paper is concerned with pulsating waves for multi-dimensional reaction-diffusion equations in spatially periodic media. First, assuming the existence of pulsating waves connecting two linearly stable steady states, we study the continuity of wave speeds with respect to the direction of propagation. The continuity was proved in [15] under the extra condition that the speeds are nonzero in all directions. Here, we revisit this continuity result without the extra condition. Secondly, we provide some sufficient conditions ensuring the existence of pulsating waves in rapidly oscillating media,…
In this paper we provide an example of a class of two reaction-diffusion-ODE equations with homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions, in which Turing-type instability not only destabilizes constant steady states but also induces blow-up of nonnegative spatially heterogeneous solutions. Solutions of this problem preserve nonnegativity and uniform boundedness of the total mass. Moreover, for the corresponding system with two non-zero diffusion coefficients, all nonnegative solutions are global in time. We prove that a removal of diffusion in one of the equations leads to a finite-time blow-up of …
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…
This paper is devoted to the study of the asymptotic behaviors of the minimal speed of propagation of pulsating traveling fronts solving the Fisher-KPP reaction-advection-diffusion equation within either a large drift, a mixture of large drift and small reaction, or a mixture of large drift and large diffusion. We consider a periodic heterogenous framework and we use the formula of Berestycki, Hamel and Nadirashvili \cite{bhn2} for the minimal speed of propagation to prove the asymptotics in any space dimension $N.$ We express the limits as the maxima of certain variational quantities over the…
In this paper, we analyse propagating fronts in the context of hyperbolic theories of dissipative processes. These can be considered as a natural alternative to the more classical parabolic models. Emphasis is given toward the numerical computation of the invasion velocity.
This paper aims to explore the temporal-spatial spreading and asymptotic behaviors of West Nile virus by a reaction-advection-diffusion system with free boundaries, especially considering the impact of advection term on the extinction and persistence of West Nile virus. We define the spatial-temporal risk index $R^{F}_{0}(t)$ with the advection rate and the general basic disease reproduction number $R^D_0$ to get the vanishing-spreading dichotomy regimes of West Nile virus. We show that there exists a threshold value $μ^{*}$ of the advection rate, and obtain the threshold results of it. When t…
We revisit the problem of recovering wave speeds and density across a curved interface from reflected wave amplitudes. Such amplitudes have been exploited for decades in (exploration) seismology in this context. However, the analysis in seismology has been based on linearization and mostly flat interfaces. Here, we present a nonlinear analysis allowing curved interfaces, establish uniqueness and provide a reconstruction, while making the notion of amplitude precise through a procedure rooted in microlocal analysis.
We establish rigorous lower bounds on the speed of traveling fronts and on the bulk burning rate in reaction-diffusion equation with passive advection. The non-linearity is assumed to be of either KPP or ignition type. We consider two main classes of flows. Percolating flows, which are characterized by the presence of long tubes of streamlines mixing hot and cold material, lead to strong speed-up of burning which is linear in the amplitude of the flow, $U$. On the other hand the cellular flows, which have closed streamlines, are shown to produce weaker increase in reaction. For such flows we g…
We study the asymptotic speed of traveling fronts of the scalar reaction diffusion for positive reaction terms and with a diffusion coefficient depending nonlinearly on the concentration and on its gradient. We restrict our study to diffusion coefficients of the form $D(u,u_x) = m u^{m-1} u_x^{m(p-2)}$ for which existence and convergence to traveling fronts has been established. We formulate a variational principle for the asymptotic speed of the fronts. Upper and lower bounds for the speed valid for any $m\ge0, p\ge 1$ are constructed. When $m=1, p=2$ the problem reduces to the constant diffu…
Invasion phenomena for heterogeneous reaction-diffusion equations are contemporary and challenging questions in applied mathematics. In this paper we are interested in the question of spreading for a reaction-diffusion equation when the subdomain where the reaction term is positive is shifting/contracting at a given speed $c$. This problem arises in particular in the modelling of the impact of climate change on population dynamics. By placing ourselves in the appropriate moving frame, this leads us to consider a reaction-diffusion-advection equation with a heterogeneous in space reaction term,…
A hallmark of a plethora of intracellular signaling pathways is the spatial separation of activation and deactivation processes that potentially results in precipitous gradients of activated proteins. The classical Metabolic Control Analysis (MCA), which quantifies the influence of an individual process on a system variable as the control coefficient, cannot be applied to spatially separated protein networks. The present paper unravels the principles that govern the control over the fluxes and intermediate concentrations in spatially heterogeneous reaction networks. Our main results are two ty…
This paper studies the phenomenon of invasion for heterogeneous reaction-diffusion equations in periodic domains with monostable and combustion reaction terms. We give an answer to a question rised by Berestycki, Hamel and Nadirashvili in [5] concerning the connection between the speed of invasion and the speed of fronts. To do so, we extend the classical Freidlin-Gartner formula to such equations, using a geometrical argument devised by Rossi in [17], and derive some bounds on the speed of fronts using estimates on the heat kernel.
This paper is devoted to the study of some qualitative and quantitative aspects of nonlinear propagation phenomena in diffusive media. More precisely, we consider the case a reaction-diffusion equation in a periodic medium with ignition-type nonlinearity, the heterogeneity being on the nonlinearity, the operator and the domain. Contrary to previous works, we study the asymptotic spreading properties of the solutions of the Cauchy problem with general initial conditions which satisfy very mild assumptions at infinity. We introduce several concepts generalizing the notion of spreading speed and …
This paper is devoted to the study of propagation phenomena for a Lotka-Volterra reaction-advection-diffusion competition model in a periodic habitat. We first investigate the global attractivity of a semi-trival steady state for the periodic initial value problem. Then we establish the existence of the rightward spreading speed and its coincidence with the minimal wave speed for spatially periodic rightward traveling waves. We also obtain a set of sufficient conditions for the rightward spreading speed to be linearly determinate. Finally, we apply the obtained results to a prototypical reacti…
Spatially periodic reaction-diffusion equations typically admit pulsating waves which describe the transition from one steady state to another. Due to the heterogeneity, in general such an equation is not invariant by rotation and therefore the speed of the pulsating wave may a priori depend on its direction. However, little is actually known in the literature about whether it truly does: surprisingly, it is even known in the one-dimensional monostable Fisher-KPP case that the speed is the same in the opposite directions despite the lack of symmetry. Here we investigate this issue in the bista…
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…
We investigate in this paper a scalar reaction diffusion equation with a nonlinear reaction term depending on x-ct. Here, c is a prescribed parameter modelling the speed of climate change and we wonder whether a population will survive or not, that is, we want to determine the large-time behaviour of the associated solution. This problem has been solved recently when the nonlinearity is of KPP type. We consider in the present paper general reaction terms, that are only assumed to be negative at infinity. Using a variational approach, we construct two thresholds determining the existence and th…
We consider equation $u_t(t,x) = Δu(t,x)- u(t,x) + g(u(t-h,x)) (*) $, when $g:\R_+\to \R_+$ has exactly two fixed points: $x_1= 0$ and $x_2=κ>0$. Assuming that $g$ is unimodal and has negative Schwarzian, we indicate explicitly a closed interval $\mathcal{C} = \mathcal{C}(h,g'(0),g'(κ)) = [c_*,c^*]$ such that $(*)$ has at least one (possibly, nonmonotone) travelling front propagating at velocity $c$ for every $c \in \mathcal{C}$. Here $c_*>0$ is finite and $c^* \in \R_+ \cup \{+\infty\}$. Every time when $\mathcal{C}$ is not empty, the minimal bound $c_*$ is sharp so that there are not wavefro…
The fractional reaction diffusion equation u_t + Au = g(u) is discussed, where A is a fractional differential operator on the real line with order αbetween 0 and 2, the C^1 function g vanishes at 0 and 1, and either g is non-negative on (0,1) or g < 0 near 0. In the case of non-negative g, it is shown that solutions with initial support on the positive half axis spread into the left half axis with unbounded speed if g satisfies some weak growth condition near 0 in the case α> 1, or if g is merely positive on a sufficiently large interval near 1 in the case α< 1. On the other hand, it shown tha…
We study invasion fronts and spreading speeds in two component reaction-diffusion systems. Using a variation of Lin's method, we construct traveling front solutions and show the existence of a bifurcation to locked fronts where both components invade at the same speed. Expansions of the wave speed as a function of the diffusion constant of one species are obtained. The bifurcation can be sub or super-critical depending on whether the locked fronts exist for parameter values above or below the bifurcation value. Interestingly, in the sub-critical case numerical simulations reveal that the sprea…
This paper investigates the asymptotic behavior of the solutions of the Fisher-KPP equation in a heterogeneous medium, $$\partial_t u = \partial_{xx} u + f(x,u),$$ associated with a compactly supported initial datum. A typical nonlinearity we consider is $f(x,u) = μ_0 (ϕ(x)) u(1-u)$, where $μ_0$ is a 1-periodic function and $ϕ$ is a $\mathcal{C}^1$ increasing function that satisfies $\lim_{x\to +\infty} ϕ(x) = +\infty$ and $\lim_{x\to +\infty} ϕ' (x) = 0$. Although quite specific, the choice of such a reaction term is motivated by its highly heterogeneous nature. We exhibit two different behav…
We study traveling waves for a reaction-diffusion equation with nonlocal anisotropic diffusion and a linear combination of local and nonlocal monostable-type reactions. We describe relations between speeds and asymptotic of profiles of traveling waves, and prove the uniqueness of the profiles up to shifts.
We investigate spreading properties of solutions of a large class of two-component reaction-diffusion systems, including prey-predator systems as a special case. By spreading properties we mean the long time behaviour of solution fronts that start from localized (i.e. compactly supported) initial data. Though there are results in the literature on the existence of travelling waves for such systems, very little has been known-at least theoretically-about the spreading phenomena exhibited by solutions with compactly supported initial data. The main difficulty comes from the fact that the compari…
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…
In this paper, we prove some qualitative properties of pushed fronts for the periodic reaction-diffusion-equation with general monostable nonlinearities. Especially, we prove the exponential behavior of pushed fronts when they are approaching their unstable state. The proof also allows us to get the exponential behavior of pulsating fronts with speed $c$ larger than the minimal speed. Through the exponential behavior, we finally prove the stability of pushed fronts.
In the present paper we study stochastic homogenization for reaction-diffusion equations with stationary ergodic reactions. We first show that under suitable hypotheses, initially localized solutions to the PDE asymptotically become approximate characteristic functions of a ballistically expanding Wulff shape. The next crucial component is the proper definition of relevant front speeds and subsequent establishment of their existence. We achieve the latter by finding a new relation between the front speeds and the Wulff shape, provided the Wulff shape does not have corners. Once front speeds ar…
We study the time asymptotic propagation of solutions to the reaction-diffusion cooperative systems with fractional diffusion. We prove that the propagation speed is exponential in time, and we find the precise exponent of propagation. This exponent depends on the smallest index of the fractional laplacians and on the principal eigenvalue of the matrix DF(0) where F is the reaction term. We also note that this speed does not depend on the space direction.
We establish the existence of semi-wavefronts solutions for a non-local delayed reaction-diffusion equation with monostable nonlinearity. The existence result is proved for all speeds $c\geq c_\star$, where the determination of $c_\star$ is similar to the calculation of the minimal speed of propagation. The results are applied to some non-local reaction-diffusion epidemic and population models with distributed time delay.
