Study on monostable and bistable reaction–diffusion equations by iteration of travelling wave maps

Abstract

In this paper, based on the iterative properties of travelling wave maps, we develop a new method to obtain spreading speeds and asymptotic propagation for monostable and bistable reaction–diffusion equations. Precisely, for Dirichlet problems of monostable reaction–diffusion equations on the half line, by making links between travelling wave maps and integral operators associated with the Dirichlet diffusion kernel (the latter is NOT invariant under translation), we obtain some iteration properties of the Dirichlet diffusion and some a priori estimates on nontrivial solutions of Dirichlet problems under travelling wave transformation. We then provide the asymptotic behavior of nontrivial solutions in the space–time region for Dirichlet problems. These enable us to develop a unified method to obtain results on heterogeneous steady states, travelling waves, spreading speeds, and asymptotic spreading behavior for Dirichlet problem of monostable reaction–diffusion equations on R+ as well as of monostable/bistable reaction–diffusion equations on R.