Solitary wave and other solutions for nonlinear heat equations (Q867350)

The authors describe a class of nonlinear heat equations with a polynomial nonlinearity for which explicit solutions can be found by a certain ansatz. The method allows to find infinitely many solutions in terms of e.g. Jacobi elliptic functions or (in the case of Fisher's equation) the Weierstrass \(\wp\)-function. This includes solutions which had already been found by symmetry methods but also some new exact solutions. Vice versa, the authors describe a modification of Fisher's equation which possesses solitary wave solutions of any given propagation velocity.