Front Propagation Dynamics with Exponentially-Distributed Hopping

We study reaction-diffusion systems where diffusion is by jumps whose sizes are distributed exponentially. We first study the Fisher-like problem of propagation of a front into an unstable state, as typified by the A+B → 2A reaction. We find that the effect of fluctuations is especially pronounced at small hopping rates. Fluctuations are treated heuristically via a density cutoff in the reaction rate. We then consider the case of propagating up a reaction rate gradient. The effect of fluctuations here is pronounced, with the front velocity increasing without limit with increasing bulk particle density. The rate of increase is faster than in the case of a reaction-gradient with nearest-neighbor hopping. We derive analytic expressions for the front velocity dependence on bulk particle density. Computer simulations are performed to confirm the analytical results.     

Scaling,propagation, and kinetic roughening of flame fronts in random media

We introduce a model of two coupled reaction-diffusion equations to describe the dynamics and propagation of flame fronts in random media. The model incorporates heat diffusion, its dissipation, and its production through coupling to the background reactant density. We first show analytically and numerically that there is a finite critical value of the background density below which the front associated with the temperature field stops propagating. The critical exponents associated with this transition are shown to be consistent with meanfield theory of percolation. Second, we study the kinetic roughening associated with a moving planar flame front above the critical density. By numerically calculating the time-dependent width and equal-time height correlation function of the front, we demonstrate that the roughening process belongs to the universality class of the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang interface equation. Finally, we show how this interface equation can be analytically derived from our model in the limit of almost uniform background density.     

Irregular wakes in reaction-diffusion waves

Reaction-diffusion equations have proved to be highly successful models for a wide range of biological and chemical systems, but chaotic solutions have been very rarely documented. We present a new mechanism for generating apparently chaotic spatiotemporal irregularity in such systems, by analysing in detail the bifurcation structure of a particular set of reaction-diffusion equations on an infinite one-dimensional domain, with particular initial conditions. We show that possible solutions include travelling fronts which leave behind either regular or irregular spatiotemporal oscillations. Using a combination of analytical and numerical analysis, we show that the irregular behaviour arises from the instability of oscillations induced by the passage of the front. Finally, we discuss the generality of this mechanism as a way in which spatiotemporal irregularities can arise naturally in reaction-diffusion systems.     

Propagation of fronts in activator-inhibitor systems with a cutoff

We consider a two-component system of reaction-diffusion equations with a small cutoff in the reaction term. A semi-analytical solution of fronts and how the front velocities vary with the parameters are given for the case when the system has a piecewise linear nonlinearity. We find the existence of a nonequilibrium Ising-Bloch bifurcation for the front speed when the cutoff is present. Numerical results of solutions to these equations are also presented and they allow us to consider the collision between fronts, and the existence of different types of traveling waves emerging from random initial conditions.     

Dynamics of A + B --> C reaction fronts in the presence of buoyancy-driven convection

The dynamics of A+B-->C fronts in horizontal solution layers can be influenced by buoyancy-driven convection as soon as the densities of A, B, and C are not all identical. Such convective motions can lead to front propagation even in the case of equal diffusion coefficients and initial concentration of reactants for which reaction-diffusion (RD) scalings predict a nonmoving front. We show theoretically that the dynamics in the presence of convection can in that case be predicted solely on the basis of the knowledge of the one-dimensional RD density profile across the front.     

Entropy-driven phase transitions with influence of the field-dependent diffusion coefficient

We present a comprehensive study of phase transitions in a single-field reaction-diffusion stochastic systems with a field-dependent mobility of a power-law form and internal fluctuations. Using variational principles and mean-field theory we have shown that the noise can sustain spatial patterns and leads to phase transitions type of “order-disorder”. These phase transitions can be critical and non-critical in character. Our theoretical results are verified by computer simulations.     

Bistable reaction-diffusion systems can have robust zero-velocity fronts

We show that for a class of bistable reaction-diffusion systems, zero-velocity fronts can be robust in the singular limit where one of the diffusion coefficients vanishes. In this case, stationary fronts can persist along variations of the system parameters. This property contrasts with the standard result that the front velocity v(&mgr;), expressed as a function of a control parameter &mgr;, is zero only at some isolated values &mgr;(0), and thus not giving robustness to zero-velocity fronts when &mgr; is varied. (c) 2000 American Institute of Physics.     

Convection in chemical fronts with quadratic and cubic autocatalysis

Convection in chemical fronts enhances the speed and determines the curvature of the front. Convection is due to density gradients across the front. Fronts propagating in narrow vertical tubes do not exhibit convection, while convection develops in tubes of larger diameter. The transition to convection is determined not only by the tube diameter, but also by the type of chemical reaction. We determine the transition to convection for chemical fronts with quadratic and cubic autocatalysis. We show that quadratic fronts are more stable to convection than cubic fronts. We compare these results to a thin front approximation based on an eikonal relation. In contrast to the thin front approximation, reaction-diffusion models show a transition to convection that depends on the ratio between the kinematic viscosity and the molecular diffusivity. (c) 2002 American Institute of Physics.     

Stability of convective patterns in reaction fronts: a comparison of three models

Autocatalytic reaction fronts generate density gradients that may lead to convection. Fronts propagating in vertical tubes can be flat, axisymmetric, or nonaxisymmetric, depending on the diameter of the tube. In this paper, we study the transitions to convection as well as the stability of different types of fronts. We analyze the stability of the convective reaction fronts using three different models for front propagation. We use a model based on a reaction-diffusion-advection equation coupled to the Navier-Stokes equations to account for fluid flow. A second model replaces the reaction-diffusion equation with a thin front approximation where the front speed depends on the front curvature. We also introduce a new low-dimensional model based on a finite mode truncation. This model allows a complete analysis of all stable and unstable fronts.     

Front dynamics in reaction-diffusion systems with Levy flights: a fractional diffusion approach

The use of reaction-diffusion models rests on the key assumption that the diffusive process is Gaussian. However, a growing number of studies have pointed out the presence of anomalous diffusion, and there is a need to understand reactive systems in the presence of this type of non-Gaussian diffusion. Here we study front dynamics in reaction-diffusion systems where anomalous diffusion is due to asymmetric Levy flights. Our approach consists of replacing the Laplacian diffusion operator by a fractional diffusion operator of order alpha, whose fundamental solutions are Levy alpha-stable distributions that exhibit power law decay, x(-(1+alpha)). Numerical simulations of the fractional Fisher-Kolmogorov equation and analytical arguments show that anomalous diffusion leads to the exponential acceleration of the front and a universal power law decay, x(-alpha), of the front's tail.     

Asymptotic behaviour of initially separated A + B(static) → 0 reaction-diffusion systems

We examine the long-time behaviour of A + B(static) → 0 reaction-diffusion systems with initially separated species A and B. All of our analysis is carried out for arbitrary (positive) values of the diffusion constant D_A of particles A and initial concentrations a₀ and b₀ of A's and B's. We derive general formulae for the location of the reaction zone centre, the total reaction rate, and the concentration profile of species A outside the reaction zone. The general properties of the reaction zone are studied with a help of the scaling ansatz. Using the mean-field approximation we find the functional forms of ‘tails’ of the reaction rate R and the dependence of the width of the reaction zone on the external parameters of the system. We also study the change in the kinetics of the system with D_B > 0 in the limit D_B → 0. Our results are supported by numerical solutions of the mean-field reaction-diffusion equation.     

Beyond mean-field theories with zero-range effective interactions: a way to handle the ultraviolet divergence

Zero-range effective interactions are commonly used in nuclear physics and in other domains to describe many-body systems within the mean-field model. If they are used within a beyond-mean-field framework, contributions to the total energy that display an ultraviolet divergence are found. We propose a general strategy to regularize this divergence and we illustrate it in the case of the second-order corrections to the equation of state (EOS) of uniform symmetric matter. By setting a momentum cutoff Λ, we show that for every (physically meaningful) value of Λ it is possible to determine a new interaction such that the EOS with the second-order corrections reproduces the empirical EOS, with a fit of the same quality as that obtained at the mean-field level.     

Front dynamics in heterogeneous diffusive media

We herein consider two-component reaction-diffusion systems with a specific bistable and odd symmetric nonlinearity, which have the bifurcation structure of pitchfork type traveling front solutions with opposite velocities. We introduce a spatial heterogeneity, for example, a Heaviside-like abrupt change at the origin in the space, into diffusion coefficients. Numerically, the responses of traveling fronts via the heterogeneity can be classified into four types of behavior depending on the strength of the heterogeneity, which, in the present paper, is represented by the height of the jump: passage, stoppage, and two types of reflection. The goal of the present paper is to reduce the PDE dynamics to finite-dimensional ODE systems on a center manifold and show the mathematical mechanism for producing the four types of response in the PDE systems using finite-dimensional ODE systems. The reduced ODE systems include the terms (referred to as heterogeneous perturbations) originating from the interaction between traveling front solutions and the heterogeneity, which is very important for determining the dynamics of the ODE systems. In the present paper, we succeed in calculating these heterogeneous perturbations exactly and explicitly.     

Wave train selection behind invasion fronts in reaction-diffusion predator-prey models

Wave trains, or periodic travelling waves, can evolve behind invasion fronts in oscillatory reaction-diffusion models for predator-prey systems. Although there is a one-parameter family of possible wave train solutions, in a particular predator invasion a single member of this family is selected. Sherratt (1998) [13] has predicted this wave train selection, using a λ-ω system that is a valid approximation near a supercritical Hopf bifurcation in the corresponding kinetics and when the predator and prey diffusion coefficients are nearly equal. Away from a Hopf bifurcation, or if the diffusion coefficients differ somewhat, these predictions lose accuracy. We develop a more general wave train selection prediction for a two-component reaction-diffusion predator-prey system that depends on linearizations at the unstable homogeneous steady states involved in the invasion front. This prediction retains accuracy farther away from a Hopf bifurcation, and can also be applied when the predator and prey diffusion coefficients are unequal. We illustrate the selection prediction with its application to three models of predator invasions.     

Effect of a Local Source or Sink of Inhibitor on Turing Patterns

We investigate a reaction-diffusion model in which a Turing pattern develops and reproduces the formation of periodic segments behind a propagating chemical wave front. The chemical scheme involves two species known as activator and inhibitor. The model can be used to mimic the formation of prevertebrae during the early development of vertebrate embryo. Deterministic and stochastic analyses of the reaction-diffusion processes are performed for two typical sets of parameter values, far from and close to the Turing bifurcation. The effects of a local source or sink of inhibitor on the growing structure are studied and successfully compared with experiments performed on chick embryos. We show that fluctuations may lead to the formation of additional prevertebra.     

Evolution on a smooth landscape

We study in detail a recently proposed simple discrete model for evolution on smooth landscapes. An asymptotic solution of this model for long times is constructed. We find that the dynamics of the population is governed by correlation functions that although being formally down by powers ofN (the population size), nonetheless control the evolution process after a very short transient. The long-time behavior can be found analytically since only one of these higher order correlators (the two-point function) is relevant. We compare and contrast the exact findings derived herein with a previously proposed phenomenological treatment employing mean-field theory supplemented with a cutoff at small population density. Finally, we relate our results to the recently studied case of mutation on a totally flat landscape.     

A New Method and a New Scaling for Deriving Fermionic Mean-Field Dynamics

We introduce a new method for deriving the time-dependent Hartree or Hartree-Fock equations as an effective mean-field dynamics from the microscopic Schrödinger equation for fermionic many-particle systems in quantum mechanics. The method is an adaption of the method used in Pickl (Lett. Math. Phys. 97 (2) 151–164 2011) for bosonic systems to fermionic systems. It is based on a Gronwall type estimate for a suitable measure of distance between the microscopic solution and an antisymmetrized product state. We use this method to treat a new mean-field limit for fermions with long-range interactions in a large volume. Some of our results hold for singular attractive or repulsive interactions. We can also treat Coulomb interaction assuming either a mild singularity cutoff or certain regularity conditions on the solutions to the Hartree(-Fock) equations. In the considered limit, the kinetic and interaction energy are of the same order, while the average force is subleading. For some interactions, we prove that the Hartree(-Fock) dynamics is a more accurate approximation than a simpler dynamics that one would expect from the subleading force. With our method we also treat the mean-field limit coupled to a semiclassical limit, which was discussed in the literature before, and we recover some of the previous results. All results hold for initial data close (but not necessarily equal) to antisymmetrized product states and we always provide explicit rates of convergence.     

Segregation in reaction-diffusion systems

Segregation of reactants in reaction-diffusion systems is a spatial structure that can be formed either as a result of a dynamical process or as an initially prepared system. In this paper we review our recent results on both such systems. First we study the dynamic segregation at a single trap, in particular in the presence of fields and disorder. Then we study properties of the dynamic reaction front produced due to initial segregation of the reactants in the A + B→C system. Both systems are shown to exhibit anomalous kinetic properties.