Weakly coupled traveling waves for a model of growth and competition in a flow reactor (Q2494442)

The author studies the following reaction-diffusion system \[ \partial S /\partial t=\rho \partial^2S /\partial x^2-\alpha \partial S /\partial x-f_1\left(S\right)P_1-f_2\left(S\right)P_2, \] \[ \partial P_i/\partial t=d_i \partial^2 P_i/\partial x^2-\alpha\partial P_i/\partial x+[f_i\left(S\right)-K_i],\text{ for }i=1,2. \] This system is a model of microbial competition in a tubular reactor, where constant amount of nutrient enters at one end with velocity \(\alpha\). Here, \(S\left(x,t\right)\) denotes the density of the nutrient at time \(t\) and location \(x,\) and \(P_i\left(x,t\right)\) denote the densities of organisms \(i,\) for \(i=1,2.\) Travelling wave solutions describing the coexistence of the two populations are proved to exist under suitable assumptions about the strictly increasing and Lipschitz continuous uptake functions \(f_i\) when the input nutrient slightly exceeds the maximum carrying capacity for the two species.