Traveling wave speeds in rapidly oscillating media

Fathi Dkhil and Angela Stevens

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Submission date: 10. Oct. 2005
Pages: 25
published in: Discrete and continuous dynamical systems / A, 25 (2009) 1, p. 89-108 
DOI number (of the published article): 10.3934/dcds.2009.25.89
Bibtex
MSC-Numbers: 35B20, 35B27, 35B50, 35C20, 35K55, 35K57, 41A60
Keywords and phrases: reaction-diffusion equations, homogenization, traveling wave speed
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Abstract:
In this paper we study the effects of periodically varying heterogeneous media on the speed of traveling waves in reaction-diffusion equations. Under suitable conditions the traveling wave speed of the non-homogenized problem can be calculated in terms of the speed of the homogenized problem. We discuss a variety of examples and focus especially on the influence of the symmetric and antisymmetric part of the diffusion matrix on the wave speed.