Transition fronts for periodic bistable reaction-diffusion equations (Q889719)

This paper is concerned with the existence and qualitative properties of transition fronts for spatially periodic reaction-diffusion equations with bistable nonlinearities. The notion of transition fronts was introduced by \textit{H. Berestycki} and \textit{F. Hamel} [Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 65, No. 5, 592--648 (2012; Zbl 1248.35039)] and roughly refers to time-global solutions whose profile connects two stable steady states within a uniform range. It trivially includes the more usual notion of pulsating fronts. The authors first show that, as soon as a transition front moves with a non zero speed, then it is in fact a pulsating front, and therefore it is unique up to time shifts. It turns out that this non zero speed assumption is crucial. Indeed, another striking result of this paper is the construction of a counter-example where there exist transition fronts which are not pulsating fronts. These transition fronts have a zero global mean speed (more precisely, they lie between two stationary fronts) and arise from some wave-blocking phenomena which occur when the period is large.