Paper 3, Section II, A

Mathematical Biology
Part II, 2013

An activator-inhibitor system is described by the equations

ut=2ux2+uuv+au2vt=d2vx2+u2buv\begin{aligned} &\frac{\partial u}{\partial t}=\frac{\partial^{2} u}{\partial x^{2}}+u-u v+a u^{2} \\ &\frac{\partial v}{\partial t}=d \frac{\partial^{2} v}{\partial x^{2}}+u^{2}-b u v \end{aligned}

where a,b,d>0a, b, d>0.

Find and sketch the range of a,ba, b for which the spatially homogeneous system has a stable stationary solution with u>0u>0 and v>0v>0.

Considering spatial perturbations of the form cos(kx)\cos (k x) about the solution found above, find conditions for the system to be unstable. Sketch this region in the (d,b)(d, b) plane for fixed a(0,1)a \in(0,1).

Find kck_{c}, the critical wavenumber at the onset of the instability, in terms of aa and bb.