No Arabic abstract
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 related by a suitable change of variables. Finally a variational principle proven for monostable reaction terms is shown to be a formulation of the two previous ones in yet another independent variable.
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 $mge0, pge 1$ are constructed. When $m=1, p=2$ the problem reduces to the constant diffusion problem and the bounds correspond to the classic Zeldovich Frank-Kamenetskii lower bound and the Aronson-Weinberger upper bound respectively. In the special case $m(p-1) = 1$ a local lower bound can be constructed which coincides with the aforementioned upper bound. The speed in this case is completely determined in agreement with recent results.
Using pointwise semigroup techniques, we establish sharp rates of decay in space and time of a perturbed reaction diffusion front to its time-asymptotic limit. This recovers results of Sattinger, Henry and others of time-exponential convergence in weighted $L^p$ and Sobolev norms, while capturing the new feature of spatial diffusion at Gaussian rate. Novel features of the argument are a point-wise Green function decomposition reconciling spectral decomposition and short-time Nash-Aronson estimates and an instantaneous tracking scheme similar to that used in the study of stability of viscous shock waves.
We study the minimal speed of propagating fronts of convection reaction diffusion equations of the form $u_t + mu phi(u) u_x = u_{xx} +f(u)$ for positive reaction terms with $f(0 >0$. The function $phi(u)$ is continuous and vanishes at $u=0$. A variational principle for the minimal speed of the waves is constructed from which upper and lower bounds are obtained. This permits the a priori assesment of the effect of the convective term on the minimal speed of the traveling fronts. If the convective term is not strong enough, it produces no effect on the minimal speed of the fronts. We show that if $f(u)/sqrt{f(0)} + mu phi(u) < 0$, then the minimal speed is given by the linear value $2 sqrt{f(0)}$, and the convective term has no effect on the minimal speed. The results are illustrated by applying them to the exactly solvable case $u_t + mu u u_x = u_{xx} + u (1 -u)$. Results are also given for the density dependent diffusion case $u_t + mu phi(u) u_x = (D(u)u_x)_x +f(u)$.
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 which has been left open so far. Through this property, we also prove the stability of pushed fronts.
We establish an integral variational principle for the spreading speed of the one dimensional reaction diffusion equation with Stefan boundary conditions, for arbitrary reaction terms. This principle allows to obtain in a simple way the dependence of the speed on the Stefan constant. As an application a generalized Zeldovich-Frank-Kamenetskii lower bound for the speed, valid for monostable and combustion reaction terms, is given.