A variational approach to bifurcation in reaction-diffusion systems with Signorini type boundary conditions

We consider a simple reaction-diffusion system exhibiting Turing’s diffusion driven instability if supplemented with classical homogeneous mixed boundary conditions. We consider the case when the Neumann boundary condition is replaced by a unilateral condition of Signorini type on a part of the boundary and show the existence and location of bifurcation of stationary spatially non-homogeneous solutions. The nonsymmetric problem is reformulated as a single variational inequality with a potential operator, and a variational approach is used in a certain non-direct way.