Spikes for the Gierer-Meinhardt system with discontinuous diffusion coefficients (Q733763)

This paper deals with the Gierer-Meinhardt system, in \((-1,+1)\) \[ a_t=\varepsilon^2a_{xx}-a+\frac{a^2}{h}, \qquad \tau h_t=(D(x)h_x)_x-h+a^2, \] associated with the Neumann boundary conditions \[ a_x(-1)=a_x(+1)=0\quad h_x(-1)=h_x(+1)=0. \] Here the diffusion coefficient \(D(x)\) is the step function \(D(x)=D_1\) on \(-1<x<x_b\), \(D(x)=D_2\) on \(x_b<x<1\), \(D_1>0,D_2>0\), \(D_1\not=D_2\), \(\varepsilon,\tau\) are constants with \(0<\varepsilon\ll1\), \(\tau\geq 0\). The authors study, in adapted Sobolev-type spaces, existence and location of stationary spike solutions of the above problem. Under suitable conditions on \(D_1,D_2\), he proves that a stable interior-spike solution exists, away from \(x_b\), only in the left interval \((-1,x_b)\). Existence of a spike near \(x_b\), whose center has a distance of order \(\varepsilon\) from \(x_b\), is also studied. The proofs are based on Lyapunov-Schmidt reduction and a nonlocal eigenvalue problem. Analytical results are compared with numerical computations.