Traveling wave solutions in a half-space for boundary reactions

Abstract

We prove the existence and uniqueness of a traveling front and of its speed for the homogeneous heat equation in the half-plane with a Neumann boundary reaction term of unbalanced bistable type or of combustion type. We also establish the monotonicity of the front and, in the bistable case, its behavior at infinity. In contrast with the classical bistable interior reaction model, its behavior at the side of the invading state is of power type, while at the side of the invaded state its decay is exponential. These decay results rely on the construction of a family of explicit bistable traveling fronts. Our existence results are obtained via a variational method, while the uniqueness of the speed and of the front rely on a comparison principle and the sliding method.