Cylindrically symmetric travelling fronts in a periodic reaction—diffusion equation with bistable nonlinearity

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the existence, non-existence and qualitative properties of cylindrically symmetric travelling fronts for time-periodic reaction–diffusion equations with bistable nonlinearity in ℝm with m ≥ 2. It should be mentioned that the existence and stability of two-dimensional time-periodic V-shaped travelling fronts and three-dimensional time-periodic pyramidal travelling fronts have been studied previously. In this paper we consider two cases: the first is that the wave speed of a one-dimensional travelling front is positive and the second is that the one-dimensional wave speed is zero. For both cases we establish the existence, non-existence and qualitative properties of cylindrically symmetric travelling fronts. In particular, for the first case we furthermore show the asymptotic behaviours of level sets of the cylindrically symmetric travelling fronts.