Traveling wave solutions for degenerate nonlinear parabolic equations

Abstract

We consider the traveling wave solutions of the degenerate nonlinear parabolic equation $$u_{t}=u^{p}(u_{xx}+u)$$ which arises in the model of heat combustion, solar flares in astrophysics, plane curve evolution problems and the resistive diffusion of a force-free magnetic field in a plasma confined between two walls. We also deal with the equation $$v_{\tau }=v^{p}(v_{xx}+v-v^{-p+1})$$ related with it. We first give a result on the whole dynamics on the phase space $${\mathbb {R}}^{2}$$ with including infinity about two-dimensional ordinary differential equation that introduced the traveling wave coordinates: $$\xi = x-ct$$ by applying the Poincare compactification and dynamical system approach. Second, we focus on the connecting orbits on it and give a result on the existence of the weak traveling wave solutions with quenching for $$c>0$$ and $$p\in 2{\mathbb {N}}$$ . Moreover, we give the detailed information about the asymptotic behavior of $$u(\xi )$$ , $$u'(\xi )$$ , $$v(\xi )$$ and $$v'(\xi )$$ for $$p\in 2{\mathbb {N}}$$ . In the case that $$p \in 2 {\mathbb {N}}+1$$ , it is too complicated to determine the dynamics near the singularities on the Poincare disk, however, we classify the connecting orbits and corresponding traveling wave solutions and obtain their asymptotic behavior.