English

Reaction-Diffusion Front Speed Enhancement by Flows

Analysis of PDEs 2009-05-27 v1

Abstract

We study flow-induced enhancement of the speed of pulsating traveling fronts for reaction-diffusion equations, and quenching of reaction by fluid flows. We prove, for periodic flows in two dimensions and any combustion-type reaction, that the front speed is proportional to the square root of the (homogenized) effective diffusivity of the flow. We show that this result does not hold in three and more dimensions. We also prove conjectures from [1,3,11] for cellular flows, concerning the rate of speed-up of fronts and the minimal flow amplitude necessary to quench solutions with initial data of a fixed (large) size

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0905.4250,
  title  = {Reaction-Diffusion Front Speed Enhancement by Flows},
  author = {Andrej Zlatos},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0905.4250},
  year   = {2009}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-21T13:06:11.194Z