Asymptotic behavior of spreading fronts in an anisotropic multi-stable equation on \(\mathbb{R}^N\) (Q2171883)

The authors consider a scalar reaction-diffusion equation with anisotropic diffusion and multi-stable reaction. In the well-known bistable case, there exists a single traveling wave in each direction, and by taking the corresponding Wulff shape (roughly, the inner envelope of all traveling waves), one can describe the large time spreading properties of solutions of the Cauchy problem for suitable initial data. The authors extend these results to the multi-stable case, where the nonlinear reaction can be decomposed into \(K\) bistable functions. Then there exists not one but a stacking of \(K\) traveling waves (or propagating terrace) in each direction. The authors prove that the resulting \(K\) Wulff shapes still describe the large time behavior, in terms of both spreading speeds and profile, of solutions of the Cauchy problem.