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Deterministic limit of a class of continuous time Markov chains is considered based purely on differential equation techniques. Starting from the linear system of master equations, ordinary differential equations for the moments and a partial differential equation, called Fokker–Planck equation, for the distribution is derived. Introducing closures at the level of the second and third moments, mean-field approximations are introduced. The accuracy of the mean-field approximations and the Fokker–Planck equation is investigated by using two differential equation-based and an operator semigroup-based approach.

The linear stability of the travelling wave solutions of a general reaction-diffusion system is investigated. The spectrum of the corresponding second order differential operator $L$ is studied. The problem is reduced to an asymptotically autonomous first order linear system. The relation between the spectrum of $L$ and the corresponding first order system is dealt with in detail. The first order system is investigated using exponential dichotomies. A self-contained short presentation is shown for the study of the spectrum, with elementary proofs. An algorithm is given for the determination of the exact position of the essential spectrum. The Evans function method for determining the isolated eigenvalues of $L$ is also presented. The theory is illustrated by three examples: a single travelling wave equation, a three variable combustion model and the generalized KdV equation.

We prove existence of solutions for parabolic initial value problems $\partial_t u = \Delta u + f(u)$ on $R^N$ , where $f : R \rightarrow R$ is a bounded, but possibly discontinuous function.