A geometric approach to fingering instabilities for reaction fronts in fully coupled geochemical systems

A geometrical approach described by Grindrod (1995, Proc. R.Soc. Lond. A 449, 123–38) is applied to analyse spontaneoussymmetry breaking of planar reaction fronts in fully coupledreaction-diffusion-advection problems arising in geochemistry.This method yields stability results qualitatively similar tothose of Ortoleva et al. (1987, Am. J. Sci287, 1008–40)and Chen & Ortoleva (1990, Earth Sci. Rev. 29, 183–98;1992, Modelling and Analysis of Diffusive and Advective Processesin Geosciences, SIAM), yet distinct in the treatment of large-wavenumberperturbations. The analysis is verified numerically.