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MiS Preprint
88/2005
Traveling wave speeds in rapidly oscillating media
Fathi Dkhil and Angela Stevens
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.