No Arabic abstract
Reaction-diffusion equations (RDEs) are often derived as continuum limits of lattice-based discrete models. Recently, a discrete model which allows the rates of movement, proliferation and death to depend upon whether the agents are isolated has been proposed, and this approach gives various RDEs where the diffusion term is convex and can become negative (Johnston et al., Sci. Rep. 7, 2017), i.e. forward-backward-forward diffusion. Numerical simulations suggest these RDEs support shock-fronted travelling waves when the reaction term includes an Allee effect. In this work we formalise these preliminary numerical observations by analysing the shock-fronted travelling waves through embedding the RDE into a larger class of higher order partial differential equations (PDEs). Subsequently, we use geometric singular perturbation theory to study this larger class of equations and prove the existence of these shock-fronted travelling waves. Most notable, we show that different embeddings yield shock-fronted travelling waves with different properties.
We use a geometric approach to prove the existence of smooth travelling wave solutions of a nonlinear diffusion-reaction equation with logistic kinetics and a convex nonlinear diffusivity function which changes sign twice in our domain of interest. We determine the minimum wave speed, c*, and investigate its relation to the spectral stability of the travelling wave solutions.
We study a family of reaction-diffusion equations that present a doubly nonlinear character given by a combination of the $p$-Laplacian and the porous medium operators. We consider the so-called slow diffusion regime, corresponding to a degenerate behaviour at the level 0, ormalcolor in which nonnegative solutions with compactly supported initial data have a compact support for any later time. For some results we will also require $pge2$ to avoid the possibility of a singular behaviour away from 0. Problems in this family have a unique (up to translations) travelling wave with a finite front. When the initial datum is bounded, radially symmetric and compactly supported, we will prove that solutions converging to 1 (which exist, as we show, for all the reaction terms under consideration for wide classes of initial data) do so by approaching a translation of this unique traveling wave in the radial direction, but with a logarithmic correction in the position of the front when the dimension is bigger than one. As a corollary we obtain the asymptotic location of the free boundary and level sets in the non-radial case up to an error term of size $O(1)$. In dimension one we extend our results to cover the case of non-symmetric initial data, as well as the case of bounded initial data with supporting sets unbounded in one direction of the real line. A main technical tool of independent interest is an estimate for the flux. Most of our results are new even for the special cases of the porous medium equation and the $p$-Laplacian evolution equation.
We derive a backward and forward nonlinear PDEs that govern the implied volatility of a contingent claim whenever the latter is well-defined. This would include at least any contingent claim written on a positive stock price whose payoff at a possibly random time is convex. We also discuss suitable initial and boundary conditions for those PDEs. Finally, we demonstrate how to solve them numerically by using an iterative finite-difference approach.
Similarity solutions play an important role in many fields of science: we consider here similarity in stochastic dynamics. Important issues are not only the existence of stochastic similarity, but also whether a similarity solution is dynamically attractive, and if it is, to what particular solution does the system evolve. By recasting a class of stochastic PDEs in a form to which stochastic centre manifold theory may be applied we resolve these issues in this class. For definiteness, a first example of self-similarity of the Burgers equation driven by some stochastic forced is studied. Under suitable assumptions, a stationary solution is constructed which yields the existence of a stochastic self-similar solution for the stochastic Burgers equation. Furthermore, the asymptotic convergence to the self-similar solution is proved. Second, in more general stochastic reaction-diffusion systems stochastic centre manifold theory provides a framework to construct the similarity solution, confirm its relevance, and determines the correct solution for any compact initial condition. Third, we argue that dynamically moving the spatial origin and dynamically stretching time improves the description of the stochastic similarity. Lastly, an application to an extremely simple model of turbulent mixing shows how anomalous fluctuations may arise in eddy diffusivities. The techniques and results we discuss should be applicable to a wide range of stochastic similarity problems.
Biological invasion, whereby populations of motile and proliferative individuals lead to moving fronts that invade into vacant regions, are routinely studied using partial differential equation (PDE) models based upon the classical Fisher--KPP model. While the Fisher--KPP model and extensions have been successfully used to model a range of invasive phenomena, including ecological and cellular invasion, an often--overlooked limitation of the Fisher--KPP model is that it cannot be used to model biological recession where the spatial extent of the population decreases with time. In this work we study the textit{Fisher--Stefan} model, which is a generalisation of the Fisher--KPP model obtained by reformulating the Fisher--KPP model as a moving boundary problem. The nondimensional Fisher--Stefan model involves just one single parameter, $kappa$, which relates the shape of the density front at the moving boundary to the speed of the associated travelling wave, $c$. Using numerical simulation, phase plane and perturbation analysis, we construct approximate solutions of the Fisher--Stefan model for both slowly invading and slowly receding travelling waves, as well as for rapidly receding travelling waves. These approximations allow us to determine the relationship between $c$ and $kappa$ so that commonly--reported experimental estimates of $c$ can be used to provide estimates of the unknown parameter $kappa$. Interestingly, when we reinterpret the Fisher--KPP model as a moving boundary problem, many disregarded features of the classical Fisher--KPP phase plane take on a new interpretation since travelling waves solutions with $c < 2$ are not normally considered. This means that our analysis of the Fisher--Stefan model has both practical value and an inherent mathematical value.