On the stability of high Lewis number combustion fronts (Q1030537)

This paper deals with stability properties of the combustion front solutions of the following system, in one spatial dimension \(x\in\mathbb R\): \[ u_t=u_{xx}+y\Omega(u), \qquad y_t=\varepsilon y_{xx}-\beta y \Omega(u), \] which satisfies the boundary conditions \[ (u,y)= \bigg(\frac{1}{\beta},0\bigg) \text{ at }-\infty \quad\text{and}\quad (u,y)=(0,1) \text{ at }+\infty \] at exponential rates. Here \(\beta>0\), \(\varepsilon=\frac{1}{\text{Le}}>0\) (Le denotes the Levis number), and (the reaction rate) \(\Omega(u)=e^{-\frac{1}{u}}\) for \(u>0\) and \(\Omega(u)=0\) otherwise. Traveling waves are stationary solutions of the system obtained by the introduction of \(\xi=x-ct\) in (1), i.e. solutions of the system \[ u_{\xi\xi}+cu_{\xi}=-y\Omega(u)\text{ and }\varepsilon y_{\xi\xi}+cy_{\xi}= \beta y\Omega(u), \tag{1} \] where \(c\) represents the speed of the wave. Let \((u_{\varepsilon}(\xi),y_{\varepsilon} (\xi)),c_{\varepsilon}, \xi=x-c_{\varepsilon}t\) be the front of (1), when \(\varepsilon>0,\) and \((u_o(\xi),y_o(\xi)),c_o,\xi=x-c_ot,\) the front, when \(\varepsilon=0.\) The main results are as follows: 1) If the front \((u_o,y_o)\) is unstable, then, for \(\varepsilon\) small enough, the front \((u_{\varepsilon},y_{\varepsilon})\) is also unstable. 2) Under suitable assumptions on the Evans function, if \((u_o,y_o)\) is spectrally stable, then \((u_{\varepsilon},y_{\varepsilon})\) is also spectrally stable, for \(\varepsilon\) small enough. The proof is based on the construction of the stability index bundle.