Monostable pulled fronts and logarithmic drifts (Q2131383)

This paper is concerned with the issue of logarithmic drifts in the position of the level sets of solutions of monostable reaction-diffusion equations, with respect to the traveling front with minimal speed. It is known that the drift phenomenon disappears when the minimal front speed is nonlinearly determined, and a logarithmic drift occurs when the minimal front speed is linearly determined and the reaction is of KPP type. It is an open problem that whether logarithmic drifts exist when the minimal front speed is linearly determined and the reaction is not of KPP type. The author of this paper proved that a logarithmic drift still appears, but may involve a different factor. The author first considered a special case when the front has fast decay under the additional assumption that the reaction is linear around zero. A lower estimate on the position of level sets is provided. The result shows that the drift cannot be the same as in the KPP case. Then the author studied the general pulled case. The super- and sub-solutions are constructed in the two cases that the fronts decay fast and slow. Based on the super- and sub-solutions, by the elementary comparison argument, the author obtained that a logarithmic drift still appears.