The \(\Gamma\)-limit of traveling waves in the FitzHugh-Nagumo system (Q2415293)

The paper under review deals with the $\Gamma$-limit of traveling waves in the FitzHugh-Nagumo system. The authors investigate planar traveling wave solutions of the following FitzHugh-Nagumo system \[ \begin{cases} u_t=\Delta u+\frac{1}{d}(f_\epsilon(u)-\epsilon \sigma v),\\ v_t=\Delta v+u-\gamma v, \end{cases} \] where \[f_\epsilon (\xi)=-\xi (\xi -\beta_\epsilon)(\xi -1), \quad \beta_\epsilon =\frac{1}{2}-\frac{\alpha \epsilon}{\sqrt{2}} \] and $\alpha,\gamma,\sigma>0$. To treat traveling waves using $\Gamma$-converge, the authors adopt the \textit{ansatz} \[ (u(c(x-ct)),v(c(x-ct))), \] that leads to the system \[ \begin{cases} dc^2u_{xx}+dc^2u_x+f_\epsilon(u)-\epsilon \sigma v=0,\\ c^2 v_{xx}+c^2v_x-\gamma v+u=0 \end{cases} \] with $c$ to be determined. Under suitable assumptions, the authors study the $\Gamma$-convergence in $L^2_e=\{w: \int_{-\infty}^{\infty}e^xw^2\, dx<\infty\}$ of the traveling wave functional associated to the system above.