KPP pulsating front speed-up by flows (Q2470884)

The authors investigate reaction-diffusion fronts propagating in a periodic incompressible flow on \(\mathbb{R}^n\): \[ T_t + Au \cdot \nabla T=\Delta T + f(T), \] where \(A\) is a number, \(T(t,x) \in [0,1]\) is the normalized temperature and the nonlinearity \(f\) is of the KPP type: \(f(s)\) is a Lipschitz function with \(f(0)=f(1) =0\) and for \(s\in (0,1)\), \(f(s)>0\) and \(f(s) \leq f^\prime (0) s\). The Lipschitz flow \(u(x)\) is \(1\)-periodic, incompressible, and has mean zero. The authors obtain a criterion for pulsating front speed-up for the above equation by showing that the ratio of the minimal front speed and the effective diffusivity of the flow is bounded away from zero and infinity by constant independent of the flow. Some applications to reaction-diffusion fronts are also discussed in the paper.