Pulsating Fronts for a Bistable Lotka-Volterra Competition System with Advection in a Periodic Habitat

TL;DR

This paper proves the existence, stability, and uniqueness of pulsating traveling fronts in a bistable Lotka-Volterra competition system with advection in a periodic habitat, advancing understanding of spatially periodic ecological models.

Contribution

It establishes the existence, stability, and uniqueness of pulsating fronts for a complex periodic competition system with advection, which was previously unaddressed.

Findings

Existence of pulsating fronts connecting two stable states.

Asymptotic stability of the pulsating fronts.

Uniqueness of the pulsating front up to translation.

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the following Lotka-Volterra competition system with advection in a periodic habitat \begin{equation*} \begin{cases} \frac{\partial u_1}{\partial t} =d_1(x)\frac{\partial^2 u_1}{\partial x^2}-a_1(x)\frac{\partial u_1}{\partial x}+u_1\left(b_1(x)-a_{11}(x)u_1-a_{12}(x)u_2\right),\\ \frac{\partial u_2}{\partial t} =d_2(x)\frac{\partial^2 u_2}{\partial x^2}-a_2(x)\frac{\partial u_2}{\partial x}+u_2\left(b_2(x)-a_{21}(x)u_1-a_{22}(x)u_2\right), \end{cases} t>0,~x\in\Bbb R, \end{equation*} where $d_i(\cdot)$, $a_i(\cdot)$, $b_i(\cdot)$, $a_{ij}(\cdot)$ $(i,j=1,2)$ are $L$-periodic functions in $C^\nu(\Bbb{R})$ with some $\nu\in(0,1)$. Under certain assumptions, the system admits two periodic locally stable steady states $(u_1^*(x),0)$ and $(0,u_2^*(x))$. In this work, we first establish the existence of the pulsating front $U(x,x+ct)=(U_1(x,x+ct),U_2(x,x+ct))$ connecting two periodic solutions $(0,u_2^*(x))$ and $(u_1^*(x),0)$ at infinities. By using a dynamical method, we confirm further that the pulsating front is asymptotically stable for front-like initial values. As a consequence of the global asymptotically stability, we finally show that the pulsating front is unique up to translation.