Hyperbolic reaction–diffusion systems

Chaos | Hyperbolic | Patterns | Waves

One can show that two-species reaction–diffusion systems can only ever have Turing-like instabilities with real growth rates.

In contrast, hyperbolic reaction–diffusion systems (or systems with more than two species) allow for Turing and wave (or sometimes wave or Turing–Hopf) instabilities. Such instabilities lead to spatial eigenfunctions that grow and oscillate, typically giving rise to spatiotemporal dynamics.

Here we consider a hyperbolic version of the Brusselator, given by

\[\begin{aligned}\tau\pdd{u}{t}+\pd{u}{t}&=D_u\nabla^2 u+a-(b+1)u+u^2v,\\ \tau\pdd{v}{t}+\pd{v}{t}&=D_v\nabla^2v+ bu-u^2v,\end{aligned}\]

where there are two new terms proportional to $\tau$.

The normal Turing instabilities will occur for $D_u<D_v$, but new Turing and wave instabilities may occur for $D_u>D_v$, so we set $D_u=D=2$ and $D_v=1$.

For more details on such systems and their generalisations, take a look at this 2022 paper.