Bifurcation studies in reaction-diffusion (Q760783)

The authors consider the well-known reaction-diffusion equation \(u_ t=u_{xx}+u(1-u)(u-a)\), \(0\leq a\leq 1/2\) with boundary conditions \(u(- L,t)=u(L,t)=b\). In the cases \(b=0\), a and 1, the energy method is used to estimate the critical length \(L_ 0\) such that for \(L<L_ 0\), the constant solution \(u=b\) is a global attractor of the flow of the equation. Several numerical experiments are performed which show that time-dependent solutions approach (stable) solutions of the corresponding steady-state problem.