Front propagation in reaction-diffusion systems with anomalous diffusion

Abstract

A numerical study of the role of anomalous diffusion in front propagation in reaction-diffusion systems is presented. Three models of anomalous diffusion are considered: fractional diffusion, tempered fractional diffusion, and a model that combines fractional diffusion and regular diffusion. The reaction kinetics corresponds to a Fisher–Kolmogorov nonlinearity. The numerical method is based on a finite-difference operator splitting algorithm with an explicit Euler step for the time advance of the reaction kinetics, and a Crank–Nicholson semi-implicit time step for the transport operator. The anomalous diffusion operators are discretized using an upwind, flux-conserving, Grunwald–Letnikov finite-difference scheme applied to the regularized fractional derivatives. With fractional diffusion of order $\alpha$, fronts exhibit exponential acceleration, $a_L(t) \sim e^{\gamma t/\alpha }$, and develop algebraic decaying tails, $\phi \sim 1/x^{\alpha }$. In the case of tempered fractional diffusion, this phenomenology prevails in the intermediate asymptotic regime $\left( \chi t \right) ^{1/\alpha } \ll x \ll 1/\lambda$, where $1/\lambda$ is the scale of the tempering. Outside this regime, i.e., for $x > 1/\lambda$, the tail exhibits the tempered decay $\phi \sim e^{-\lambda x}/x^{\alpha +1}$, and the front velocity approaches the terminal speed $v_*= \left( \gamma -\lambda ^\alpha \chi \right) / \lambda$. Of particular interest is the study of the interplay of regular and fractional diffusions. It is shown that the main role of regular diffusion is to delay the onset of front acceleration. In particular, the crossover time, $t_c$, to transition to the accelerated fractional regime exhibits a logarithmic scaling of the form $t_c \sim \log \left( \chi _d/\chi _f\right)$ where $\chi _d$ and $\chi _f$ are the regular and fractional diffusivities.