Propagation of solutions of the Porous Medium Equation with reaction and their travelling wave behaviour

Abstract

We consider reaction–diffusion equations of porous medium type, with different kind of reaction terms, and nonnegative bounded initial data. For all the reaction terms under consideration there are initial data for which the solution converges to 1 uniformly in compact sets for large times. We will characterize for which reaction terms this happens for all nontrivial nonnegative initial data, and for which ones there are also solutions converging uniformly to 0. Problems in this family have a unique (up to translations) travelling wave with a finite front and we will see how its speed gives the asymptotic velocity of all the solutions with compactly supported initial data. We will also prove in the one-dimensional case that solutions with bounded compactly supported initial data converging to 1 do so approaching a translation of this unique travelling wave. We will prove a similar result for non-compactly supported initial data in a certain class.