Propagation reversal on trees in the large diffusion regime

Abstract

In this work we study travelling wave solutions to bistable reaction–diffusion equations on bi-infinite k-ary trees in the continuum regime where the diffusion parameter is large. Adapting the spectral convergence method developed by Bates and his coworkers, we find an asymptotic prediction for the speed of travelling front solutions. In addition, we prove that the associated profiles converge to the solutions of a suitable limiting reaction–diffusion PDE. Finally, for the standard cubic nonlinearity we provide explicit formulas to bound the thin region in parameter space where the propagation direction undergoes a reversal.