Modulated traveling fronts for a nonlocal Fisher-KPP equation: A dynamical systems approach

We consider a nonlocal generalization of the Fisher-KPP equation in one spatial dimension. As a parameter is varied, the system undergoes a Turing bifurcation. We study the dynamics near this Turing bifurcation. Our results are two-fold. First, we prove the existence of a two-parameter family of bifurcating stationary periodic solutions and derive a rigorous asymptotic approximation of these solutions. We also study the spectral stability of the bifurcating stationary periodic solutions with respect to almost co-periodic perturbations. Second, we restrict to a specific class of exponential kernels for which the nonlocal problem is transformed into a higher order partial differential equation. In this context, we prove the existence of modulated traveling fronts near the Turing bifurcation that describe the invasion of the Turing unstable homogeneous state by the periodic pattern established in the first part. Both results rely on a center manifold reduction to a finite dimensional ordinary differential equation. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.