Continuous-time random walks and traveling fronts

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2002 Sep;66(3 Pt 1):030102. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.66.030102. Epub 2002 Sep 18.

Abstract

We present a geometric approach to the problem of propagating fronts into an unstable state, valid for an arbitrary continuous-time random walk with a Fisher-Kolmogorov-Petrovski-Piskunov growth/reaction rate. We derive an integral Hamilton-Jacobi type equation for the action functional determining the position of reaction front and its speed. Our method does not rely on the explicit derivation of a differential equation for the density of particles. In particular, we obtain an explicit formula for the propagation speed for the case of anomalous transport involving non-Markovian random processes.