Propagating speeds of bistable transition fronts in spatially periodic media (Q1751585)

The author studies the propagating speeds of transition fronts of spatially periodic reaction-diffusion equation of the type \[ u_t-\Delta u=f(x,u),\quad (t,x)\in \mathbb{R}\times\mathbb{R}^n, \tag{1} \] where \(f(x,u)\) is \(\mathbb{Z}^n\)-periodic with respect to \(x\), \(f: \mathbb{T}^n\times\mathbb{R}\to \mathbb{R}\) (\(\mathbb{T}^n=\mathbb{R}^n/\mathbb{Z}^n\) is the \(n\)-dimensional torus) is continuous, \(C^{\alpha}\) in \(x\) uniformly with respect to \(u\) in \(\mathbb{R}\) with \(\alpha \in(0,1)\), of the class \(C^2\) in \(u\) uniformly with \(x\in \mathbb{T}^n\) and partial derivatives \(f_u(x,u)\) and \(f_{u u}(x,u)\) are Lipschitz continuous in \(u\) on \(\mathbb{T}^n\times \mathbb{R}\). A pair \((U_e,c_e)\) with \(U_e:\mathbb{R}\times \mathbb{T}^n\mapsto \mathbb{R}\) and \(c\in \mathbb{R}\) is said to be a pulsating front of (1) with effective speed \(c_e\) in the direction \(e\in \mathbb{S}^{n-1}\) connecting \(0\) and \(1\) if: (i) the map \(u(t,x):=U_e(x\cdot e-c_e\,t,x)\) is an entire (classical) solution of the equation (1); (ii) the profile \(U_e\) satisfies \[ \lim\limits_{\xi\to+\infty}\,U_e(\xi,y)=0,\quad \lim\limits_{\xi\to\-\infty} U_e(\xi,y)=1,\quad\text{uniformly for } y\in\mathbb{T}^n. \] Under some assumptions that there exist pulsating fronts for every direction \(e\) with nonzero speeds, the author proves the continuity and differentiability properties of the front speeds and profiles with respect to the direction \(e\). Also is proved that the propagating speed of any transition front is larger than the infimum of speeds of pulsating fronts and less than supremum of speeds of pulsating fronts.