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We establish selection of critical pulled fronts in invasion processes as predicted by the marginal stability conjecture. Our result shows convergence to a pulled front with a logarithmic shift for open sets of steep initial data, including one-sided compactly supported initial conditions. We rely on robust, conceptual assumptions, namely existence and marginal spectral stability of a front traveling at the linear spreading speed and demonstrate that the assumptions hold for open classes of spatially extended systems. Previous results relied on comparison principles or probabilistic tools with implied nonopen conditions on initial data and structure of the equation. Technically, we describe the invasion process through the interaction of a Gaussian leading edge with the pulled front in the wake. Key ingredients are sharp linear decay estimates to control errors in the nonlinear matching and corrections from initial data.
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This content will become publicly available on July 27, 2026
Stability of coherent pattern formation through invasion in the FitzHugh–Nagumo system
We establish sharp nonlinear stability results for fronts that describe the creation of a periodic pattern through the invasion of an unstable state. The fronts we consider are critical, in the sense that they are expected to mediate pattern selection from compactly supported or steep initial data. We focus on pulled fronts, that is, on fronts whose propagation speed is determined by the linearization about the unstable state in the leading edge, only. We present our analysis in the specific setting of the FitzHugh–Nagumo system, where pattern-forming uniformly translating fronts have recently been constructed rigorously [Carter and Scheel (2018)], but our methods can be used to establish nonlinear stability of pulled pattern-forming fronts in general reaction-diffusion systems. This is the first stability result for critical pattern-selecting fronts and provides a rigorous foundation for heuristic, universal wave number selection laws in growth processes based on a marginal stability conjecture. The main technical challenge is to describe the interaction between two separate modes of marginal stability, one associated with the spreading process in the leading edge, and one associated with the pattern in the wake. We develop tools based on far-field/core decompositions to characterize, and eventually control, the interaction between these two different types of diffusive modes. Linear decay rates are insufficient to close a nonlinear stability argument and we therefore need a sharper description of the relaxation in the wake of the front using a phase modulation ansatz. We control regularity in the resulting quasilinear equation for the modulated perturbation using nonlinear damping estimates.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2205663
- PAR ID:
- 10634047
- Publisher / Repository:
- EMS
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of the European Mathematical Society
- ISSN:
- 1435-9855
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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