The non-monotonicity of the KPP speed with respect to diffusion in the presence of a shear flow

Abstract

In this paper, we prove via counterexamples that adding an advection term of the form Shear flow (whose streamlines are parallel to the direction of propagation) to a reaction-diffusion equation will be enough heterogeneity to spoil the increasing behavior of the KPP speed of propagation with respect to diffusion. The non-monotonicity of the speed with respect to diffusion will occur even when the reaction term and the diffusion matrices are considered homogeneous (do not depend on space variables). For the sake of completeness, we announce our results in a setting which allows domains with periodic perforations that may or may not be equal to the whole space R N . \mathbb {R}^N.