Traveling wave solutions for delayed reaction-diffusion systems and applications to diffusive Lotka-Volterra competition models with distributed delays (Q481255)

The authors investigated the problem of traveling wave solutions for following partial functional differential system \[ \frac{\partial v_i(x,t)}{\partial t}=d_i\Delta v_i(x,t)+f_i(v_t(x)),\eqno(1) \] where \(x\in \mathbb{R}, t>0, v=(v_1,\cdots,v_n)\), \(d_i>0\); \(v_t(x)=v(x,t+s), s\in [-\tau,0], \tau>0\); \(f_i:C([-\tau,0],\mathbb{R}^n)\to \mathbb{R}\). Assume that (1) is mono-stable, and there exist exactly two equilibria \(\hat{0}\) and \(\hat{E}\) (\(\hat{E}\gg \hat{0}\)) for the system. The key aim of the study is to find out the traveling wave solution connecting \(\hat{0}\) and \(\hat{E}\). General speaking, the existence of traveling wave solutions for (1) is equivalent to the existence of a pair of upper and lower solutions for the wave profile system. This conclusion can be shown by Schauder fixed point theorem or iterative technique, while \(f\) is quasi-monotone or mixed quasi-monotone. It can also be shown, while \(f\) is exponentially quasi-monotone and \(\tau>0\) is small. If one can construct a pair of upper-lower solutions connecting \(\hat{0}\) and \(\hat{E}\), then the existence of traveling wave solution connecting \(\hat{0}\) and \(\hat{E}\) is guaranteed. The difficulty always lies in the construction of such a pair of upper-lower solutions. In this article, the authors emphasize the effect of delay and the asymptotic behavior of traveling wave solutions. They introduced a concept of ``generalized upper and lower solutions'', which are not demand for the asymptotic boundary conditions. They first obtain the existence of traveling wave solution \(\Phi(\xi)\) between the lower solution and upper solution. Then they discuss the limits \(\lim\limits_{\xi\to\pm\infty}\Phi(\xi)\), by using analytical techniques. The significance of this work is that it makes the construction of upper-lower solutions more feasible and easy, but the discussion for the asymptotic behavior of upper-lower solutions is skilled and technical. The result in this article can be used for quasi-monotone systems and mixed quasi-monotone systems. The authors took a diffusive Lotka-Volterra competition system with distributed delay as example to show the application of their result on (1).