EVANS FUNCTIONS AND ASYMPTOTIC STABILITY OF TRAVELINGWAVE SOLUTIONS

This paper studies the asymptotic stability of traveling we solutions of nonlinear systems of integral-differential equations. It has been established that linear stability of traveling waves is equivalent to nonlinear stability and some "nice structure" of the spectrum of an associated operator implies the linear stability. By using the method of variation of parameter, the author defines some complex analytic function, called the Evans function. The zeros of the Evans function corresponds to the eigenvalues of the associated linear operator. By calculating the zeros of the Evans function, the asymptotic stability of the travling wave solutions is established.