Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 September 2013
The slow dynamics and linearized stability of a two-spike quasi-equilibrium solution to ageneral class of reaction-diffusion (RD) system with and without sub-diffusion isanalyzed. For both the case of regular and sub-diffusion, the method of matched asymptoticexpansions is used to derive an ODE characterizing the spike locations in the absence ofany 𝒪(1) time-scale instabilities of the two-spike quasi-equilibrium profile. These fastinstabilities result from unstable eigenvalues of a certain nonlocal eigenvalue problem(NLEP) that is derived by linearizing the RD system around the two-spike quasi-equilibriumsolution. For a particular sub-class of the reaction kinetics, it is shown that thediscrete spectrum of this NLEP is determined by the roots of some simple transcendentalequations. From a rigorous analysis of these transcendental equations, explicit sufficientconditions are given to predict the occurrence of either Hopf bifurcations or competitioninstabilities of the two-spike quasi-equilibrium solution. The theory is illustrated forseveral specific choices of the reaction kinetics.