Velocity fluctuations of noisy reaction fronts propagating into a metastable state

Abstract

The position of a reaction front, propagating into a metastable state, fluctuates because of the shot noise of reactions and diffusion. A recent theory (Meerson et al 2011 Phys. Rev. E 84 011147) gave a closed analytic expression for the front diffusion coefficient in the weak noise limit. Here we test this theory in stochastic simulations involving reacting and diffusing particles on a one-dimensional lattice. We also investigate a noise-induced systematic shift of the front velocity compared to the prediction from the spatially continuous deterministic reaction–diffusion equation.