Turing bifurcation in a system with cross diffusion

Abstract

This paper treats the conditions for the existence and stability properties of stationary solutions of reaction–diffusion equations subject to Neumann boundary data. Hence, we assume that there are two substances in a two-dimensional bounded spatial domain where they are diffusing according to Fick's law: the velocity of the flow of diffusing substance is directed opposite to the (spatial) gradient of the density and is proportional to its modulus, but the spatial flow of each substance is influenced not only by its own but also by the other one's density (cross diffusion). The domains in which the substances are diffusing are of three type: a regular hexagon, a rectangle and an isosceles rectangular triangle. It will be assumed that there is no migration across the boundary of these domains. Considering one of the relevant features of the domains as a bifurcation parameter it will be shown that at a certain critical value a diffusion driven (Turing type) instability occurs, i.e. the stationary solution stays stable with respect to the kinetic system (the system without diffusion) but becomes unstable with respect to the system with diffusion and that Turing bifurcation takes place: a spatially non-homogenous (non-constant) solution (structure or pattern) arises.