Stability analysis of reaction-diffusion systems with constant coefficients on growing domains (Q1006526)

Understanding the role of domain growth in patter formation is crucial in developmental biology. Domain growth and domain shape play a vitally important role in pattern formation and selection as growing domains have the mathematical effect of increasing diffusion rates and increasing the likelihood of a Turing instability occurring. The author analyze the stability for reaction-diffusion systems with constant coefficients on growing domains. The model equations on growing domains are transformed to fixed domains at each time yielding a conservative system. He derives and shows that the diffusion-driven instability conditions for an exponentially growing domain depend on the domain growth rate. By looking at the eigenvalues, he also shows that the shifting of the Turing space is equivalent to the standard Turing space on a fixed domain but with eigenvalues shifted to the left of the complex plane by a constant factor given by the divergence of the domain velocity. The mathematics is robust enough and the case where the divergence of the domain velocity is non-constant, for example linear or logistic growth functions or some other arbitrary growth profiles is highlighted as subject for subsequent studies.