Front propagation in hybrid reaction-diffusion epidemic models with spatial heterogeneity. Part II: Pulsating traveling waves

Abstract: We consider a two-species reaction-diffusion system in one space dimension that is derived from an epidemiological model in a spatially periodic environment with two types of pathogens: the wild type and the mutant. The system is of a hybrid nature, partly cooperative and partly competitive, but neither of these entirely. As a result, the comparison principle does not hold. In the previous work, we studied the propagation properties of the solutions to the Cauchy problem for this system and showed, among other things, that the spreading speeds of the fronts to the right and to the left directions, denoted by $c<sup>*_R$ and $c<sup>*_L$, can be characterized by using certain principal eigenvalues, and studied the homogenization limit as the spatial period $L$ tends to $0$, and also discussed the long-time behavior of solutions behind the fronts. In the present paper we prove the existence of pulsating traveling waves in the right direction (resp. left direction) with speed $c$ for any $c\geq c<sup>*_R$ (resp. $c\geq c<sup>*_L$), where $c<sup>*_R$ and $c<sup>*_L$ denote the aforementioned spreading speeds in the right and left directions. We also prove that the leading edge of any traveling wave has the exponential decay rate that is anticipated from formal linear analysis, thus extending part of the results of Hamel 2008 to systems of equations. Finally, we present an example in which the two speeds $c<sup>*_R$ and $c<sup>*_L$ are different. This is done by considering a multi-scale singular limit problem. This result highlights a marked difference between our system and scalar KPP type equations.