Anna Ghazaryan,  Postdoctoral Fellow, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

On the  uniqueness of subsonic detonation waves in inert porous medium

Abstract:  Sivashinsky's model of subsonic detonation  describes the propagation of combustion fronts in highly resistable media. The combustion front is described by a traveling wave solution of the corresponding system of equations. It is known that there exists a traveling wave  asymptotically connecting the unburnt and  burnt states, which is unique if thermal diffusivity is neglected as shown by Gordon, Kamin and Sivashinsky.The question of whether the wave is unique in the presence of thermal diffusivity has remained open. We resolve this issue through applying geometric singular perturbation theory. This is joint work with Chris Jones (UNC) and Peter Gordon (NJIT).