Universality of crystallographic pinning (Q5961948)

The authors study the universality of crystallographic pinning. This phenomenon occurs when traveling waves become pinned in certain direction despite moving with non-zero wave speed in nearby direction. They focus on a discrete two-dimensional reaction diffusion equation and show that crystallographic pinning holds in the horizontal and vertical directions for bistable nonlinearities which satisfy a specific generic condition. It is important to notice that this phenomenon is related with functional differential equations where the nonlinear part satisfy specific conditions (bistability, monotonicity). The analysis is based on dynamical systems method. In particular, they construct a heteroclinic solution for lattice equation satisfying specific boundary and monotonicity conditions. They employ the center manifold reduction along with associated shadowing properties of the lattice equation. Also, they use the Abraham transversality theorem, an extension of which is stated as a main theorem in the last section of this paper.