The saddle-node of nearly homogeneous wave trains in reaction-diffusion systems (Q2641362)

The authors study a saddle-node bifurcation scenario for a spatially homogeneous oscillation in an \(N\)-dimensional system of reaction-diffusion equations \[ u_t=Du_{xx}+f(u,\mu) \] with \(x\in{\mathbb R}\), bifurcation parameter \(\mu\in{\mathbb R}\), a nonnegative diagonal matrix \(D\) and a sufficiently smooth nonlinearity \(f\). The bifurcation creates homogeneous oscillations, whose stability is investigated. They are accompanied by wave trains with large wavelength and two different possible scenarios for the bifurcation diagrams are identified: an elliptic and a hyperbolic one (motivated by the shape of the dispersion curves). In both cases, all bifurcating wave trains are found and their stability on the whole line is investigated. Here, existence of wave trains is established using a Lyapunov-Schmidt reduction. Moreover, it is confirmed that the accompanying wave trains undergo a saddle-node bifurcation parallel to the saddle-node of the homogeneous oscillation, and also that wave trains necessarily undergo sideband instabilities prior to the saddle-node. As application, the results are illustrated using a complex Ginzburg-Landau equation.