Propagation speeds of traveling fronts for higher order autocatalytic reaction-diffusion systems (Q2642350)

The author studies the following autocatalytic reaction-diffusion system \[ u_t=d_1u_{xx}-k_1uv^m,\quad v_t=d_2v_{xx}+k_2uv^m,\eqno(1) \] where \(u\) and \(v\) are concentrations of the reactant and the autocatalyst respectively, \(d_1\) and \(d_2\) are diffusion coefficients, and \(k_1\) and \(k_2\) are any positive constants, \(m>1\) is a constant. Consider the traveling wave fronts: the solutions of (1) with the form \((u(x,t),v(x,t))=(U(z),V(z))\), \(z=x-ct\) satisfying \[ d_1U^{''}+cU^{'}-k_1UV^m=0,\quad d_2V^{''}+cV^{'}+k_2UV^m=0\eqno(2) \] with the boundary conditions \[ P_{-}=(U(-\infty),V(-\infty))=(0,v_0),\quad P_{+}=(U(+\infty),V(+\infty))=(u_0,0).\eqno(3) \] The purpose of this article is to discuss the properties of the minimal wave speed \(c^*\), especially the dependence of \(c^*\) on the parameters \(m,d_1\) and \(d_2\) for arbitrarily fixed \(u_0>0\). The method of the proofs employed here is the shooting argument which looks for the connection orbits of (2) and (3) in the 3-dim phase space. By a series of transforms of variables, (2) and (3) have been changed into \[ u_t=du_{xx}-uv^m,\quad v_t=v_{xx}+uv^m,\eqno(4) \] \[ P_{-}=(u(-\infty),v(-\infty))=(0,1),\quad P_{+}=(u(+\infty),v(+\infty))=(1,0).\eqno(5) \] For all \(d_1\geq 0,d_2>0\), the author have shown the existence of minimal wave speed \(c_d^*\) such that the traveling front solutions exist for any \(c\geq c_d^*\). The following conclusions are also obtained: all solutions of (4) with the minimal wave speed \(c_d^*\) decay to \((1,0)\) exponentially as \(z\to\infty\); the solutions of (4) with the speed \(c>c_d^*\) decay to \((1,0)\) algebraically as \(z\to\infty\); any traveling front solutions of (4) decay to \((0,1)\) exponentially as \(z\to-\infty\).