A complete Lie symmetry classification of a class of (1+2)-dimensional reaction-diffusion-convection equations

Abstract: A class of nonlinear reaction-diffusion-convection equations describing various processes in physics, biology, chemistry etc. is under study in the case of time and two space variables. The group of equivalence transformations is constructed, which is applied for deriving a Lie symmetry classification for the class of such equations by the well-known algorithm. It is proved that the algorithm leads to 32 reaction-diffusion-convection equations admitting nontrivial Lie symmetries. Furthermore a set of form-preserving transformations for this class is constructed in order to reduce this number of the equations and obtain a complete Lie symmetry classification. As a result, the so called canonical list of all inequivalent equations admitting nontrivial Lie symmetry (up to any point transformations) and their Lie symmetries are derived. The list consists of 22 equations and it is shown that any other reaction-diffusion-convection equation admitting a nontrivial Lie symmetry is reducible to one of these 22 equations. As a nontrivial example, the symmetries derived are applied for the reduction and finding exact solutions in the case of the porous-Fisher type equation with the Burgers term.