Existence and nonexistence of traveling waves for a nonlocal monostable equation (Q847650): Difference between revisions

The author considers the following nonlocal analogue of the Fisher-KPP equation: \[ u_{t}=\mu*u-u+f(u), \] where \(\mu\) is a Borel-measure on \(\mathbb R\) with \(\mu(\mathbb R)=1\) and the convolution is defined by \((\mu\ast u)(x):=\int_{y\in\mathbb R}u(x-y)\,d\mu(y)\) for a bounded and Borel-measurable function \(u\) on \(\mathbb R\). The nonlinearity \(f\) is a Lipschitz continuous function on \(\mathbb R\) with \(f(0)=f(1)=0\) and \(f>0\) in \((0,1)\). Then, \(G(u):=\mu*u-u+f(u)\) is a map from the Banach space \(L^{\infty}(\mathbb R)\) into \(L^{\infty}(\mathbb R)\) and it is Lipschitz continuous. It is proved that there exists a constant \(c_*\) such that this equation has a traveling wave solution with speed \(c\) when \(c\geq c_*\) while no traveling wave solution with speed \(c\) when \(c<c_*\), provided \(\int_{y\in\mathbb R}e^{-\lambda y}\,d\mu(y)<+\infty\) for some positive constant \(\lambda\). Also it is shown that this equation has no traveling wave solution, provided \(f'(0)>0\) and \(\int_{y\in\mathbb R}e^{-\lambda y} \,d\mu(y)=+\infty\) for all positive constants \(\lambda\).