Traveling waves of an FKPP-type model for self-organized growth

TL;DR

This paper analyzes a reaction-diffusion model inspired by biological growth, characterizing all traveling wave solutions and their conditions for existence, revealing a surprising symmetry and self-organizing behavior.

Contribution

It provides a complete classification of traveling wave solutions for a FKPP-type model with a continuum of steady states, extending understanding of self-organized growth processes.

Findings

All positive bounded traveling wave solutions are characterized.

Necessary and sufficient conditions for wave existence are established.

A simple symmetry between steady states is identified.

Abstract

We consider a reaction-diffusion system of densities of two types of particles, introduced by Edouard Hannezo et al. in the context of branching morphogenesis. It is a simple model for a growth process: active, branching particles form the growing boundary layer of an otherwise static tissue, represented by inactive particles (Cell, 171(1):242-255.e27, 2017). The active particles diffuse, branch and become irreversibly inactive upon collision with a particle of arbitrary type. In absence of active particles, this system is in a steady state, without any a priori restriction on the amount of remaining inactive particles. Thus, while related to the well-studied FKPP-equation, this system features a game-changing continuum of steady state solutions, where each corresponds to a possible outcome of the growth process. However, simulations indicate that this system self-organizes: traveling fronts with fixed shape arise under a wide range of initial data. In the present work, we describe all positive and bounded traveling wave solutions, and obtain necessary and sufficient conditions for their existence. We find a surprisingly simple symmetry in the pairs of steady states which are joined via heteroclinic wave orbits. Our approach is constructive: we first prove the existence of almost constant solutions and then extend our results via a continuity argument along the continuum of limiting points.