Existence of travelling wave solutions for reaction-diffusion-convection systems via the Conley index theory (Q5955012)

The existence of monotone traveling waves for a rather general class of reaction-diffusion-convection systems is proved via Conley index theory. The assumptions on the coefficients include a local monotonicity condition of the source term. The article extends previous results by \textit{A. I. Volpert, Vit. A. Volpert} and \textit{Vl. A. Volpert} [Traveling wave solutions of parabolic systems. Translations of Mathematical Monographs. 140. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society (1994; Zbl 1001.35060)] and by \textit{E. C. M. Crooks} and \textit{J. F. Toland} [Topol. Methods Nonlinear Anal. 11, No. 1, 19--43 (1998; Zbl 0920.35075)]. The proof of the main result, which comprises almost the whole paper, is broken down in a series of lemmas. The results are specified for ecological systems of mutualist type. As an application, conditions for the existence of ionization waves in a multicomponent plasma are given.