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This paper is concerned with the propagation dynamics of time almost periodic reaction-diffusion equations. Assuming the existence of a time almost periodic traveling wave connecting two stable steady states, we focus especially on the asymptotic behavior of average wave speeds in both rapidly oscillating and slowly oscillating environments. We prove that, in the rapidly oscillating case, the average speed converges to the constant wave speed of the homogenized equation; while in the slowly oscillating case, it approximates the arithmetic mean of the constant wave speeds for a family of equations with frozen coefficients. In both cases, we provide estimates on the convergence rates showing that, in comparison to the limiting speeds, the deviations of average speeds for almost periodic traveling waves are at most linear in certain sense. Furthermore, our explicit formulas for the limiting speeds indicate that temporal variations have significant influences on wave propagation. Even in periodic environments, it can alter the propagation direction of bistable equations.

This paper is concerned with pulsating waves for multi-dimensional reaction-diffusion equations in spatially periodic media. First, assuming the existence of pulsating waves connecting two linearly stable steady states, we study the continuity of wave speeds with respect to the direction of propagation. The continuity was proved in [15] under the extra condition that the speeds are nonzero in all directions. Here, we revisit this continuity result without the extra condition. Secondly, we provide some sufficient conditions ensuring the existence of pulsating waves in rapidly oscillating media, which allow the equations to have multiple stable steady states.

We consider reaction-diffusion fronts in spatially periodic bistable media with large periods. Whereas the homogenization regime associated with small periods had been well studied for bistable or Fisher-KPP reactions and, in the latter case, a formula for the limit minimal speeds of fronts in media with large periods had also been obtained thanks to the linear formulation of these minimal speeds and their monotonicity with respect to the period, the main remaining open question is concerned with fronts in bistable environments with large periods. In bistable media the unique front speeds are not linearly determined and are not monotone with respect to the spatial period in general, making the analysis of the limit of large periods more intricate. We show in this paper the existence of and an explicit formula for the limit of bistable front speeds as the spatial period goes to infinity. We also prove that the front profiles converge to a family of front profiles associated with spatially homogeneous equations. The main results are based on uniform estimates on the spatial width of the fronts, which themselves use zero number properties and intersection arguments.

Spatially periodic reaction-diffusion equations typically admit pulsating waves which describe the transition from one steady state to another. Due to the heterogeneity, in general such an equation is not invariant by rotation and therefore the speed of the pulsating wave may a priori depend on its direction. However, little is actually known in the literature about whether it truly does: surprisingly, it is even known in the one-dimensional monostable Fisher-KPP case that the speed is the same in the opposite directions despite the lack of symmetry. Here we investigate this issue in the bistable case and show that the set of admissible speeds is actually rather large, which means that the shape of propagation may indeed be asymmetrical. More precisely, we show in any spatial dimension that one can choose an arbitrary large number of directions , and find a spatially periodic bistable type equation to achieve any combination of speeds in those directions, provided those speeds have the same sign. In particular, in spatial dimension 1 and unlike the Fisher-KPP case, any pair of (either nonnegative or nonpositive) rightward and leftward wave speeds is admissible. We also show that these variations in the speeds of bistable pulsating waves lead to strongly asymmetrical situations in the multistable equations.

We consider the nonlinear Stefan problem $$ \left \{ \begin{array} {ll} -d \Delta u=a u-b u^2 \;\; & \mbox{for } x \in \Omega (t), \; t>0, \\ u=0 \mbox{ and } u_t=\mu|\nabla_x u |^2 \;\;&\mbox{for } x \in \partial\Omega (t), \; t>0, \\ u(0,x)=u_0 (x) \;\; & \mbox{for } x \in \Omega_0, \end{array}\right. $$ where $\Omega(0)=\Omega_0$ is an unbounded smooth domain in $\mathbb R^N$, $u_0>0$ in $\Omega_0$ and $u_0$ vanishes on $\partial\Omega_0$. When $\Omega_0$ is bounded, the long-time behavior of this problem has been rather well-understood by \cite{DG1,DG2,DLZ, DMW}. Here we reveal some interesting different behavior for certain unbounded $\Omega_0$. We also give a unified approach for a weak solution theory to this kind of free boundary problems with bounded or unbounded $\Omega_0$.

This paper is concerned with the Cauchy problem $$u_t=u_{xx} +f(t,u), \,\,\, x\in\mathbb{R},\,t>0, $$ $$u(0,x)= u_0(x), \,\,\, x\in\mathbb{R},$$ where $f$ is a rather general nonlinearity that is periodic in $t$, and satisfies $f(\cdot,0)\equiv 0$ and that the corresponding ODE has a positive periodic solution $p(t)$. Assuming that $u_0$ is front-like, that is, $u_0(x)$ is close to $p(0)$ for $x\approx -\infty$ and close to $0$ for $x\approx \infty$, we aim to determine the long-time dynamical behavior of the solution $u(t,x)$ by using the notion of propagation terrace introduced by Ducrot, Giletti and Matano (2014). We establish the existence and uniqueness of propagating terrace for a very large class of nonlinearities, and show the convergence of the solution $u(t,x)$ to the terrace as $t\to\infty$ under various conditions on $f$ or $u_0$. We first consider the special case where $u_0$ is a Heaviside type function, and prove the converge result without requiring any non-degeneracy on $f$. Furthermore, if $u_0$ is more general such that it can be trapped between two Heaviside type functions, but not necessarily monotone, we show that the convergence result remains valid under a rather mild non-degeneracy assumption on $f$. Lastly, in the case where $f$ is a non-degenerate multistable nonlinearity, we show the global and exponential convergence for a much larger class of front-like initial data.

This paper is concerned with the asymptotic behavior of bounded solutions of the Cauchy problem \begin{equation*} \left\{ \begin{array}{ll} u_t=u_{xx} +f(t,u), & x\in\mathbb{R},\,t>0,\\ u(x,0)= u_0, & x\in\mathbb{R}, \end{array}\right. \end{equation*} where $u_0$ is a nonnegative bounded function with compact support and $f$ is a rather general nonlinearity that is periodic in $t$ and satisfies $f(\cdot,0)=0$. In the autonomous case where $f=f(u)$, the convergence of every bounded solution to an equilibrium has been established by Du and Matano (2010). However, the presence of periodic forcing makes the problem significantly more difficult, partly because the structure of time periodic solutions is much less understood than that of steady states. In this paper, we first prove that any $\omega$-limit solution is either spatially constant or symmetrically decreasing, even if the initial data is not symmetric. Furthermore, we show that the set of $\omega$-limit solutions either consists of a single time-periodic solution or it consists of multiple time-periodic solutions and heteroclinic connections among them. Next, under a mild non-degenerate assumption on the corresponding ODE, we prove that the $\omega$-limit set is a singleton, which implies the solution converges to a time-periodic solution. Lastly, we apply these results to equations with bistable nonlinearity and combustion nonlinearity, and specify more precisely which time-periodic solutions can possibly be selected as the limit.