Existence of a traveling wave solution in a free interface problem with fractional order kinetics

In this paper we consider a system of two reaction-diffusion equations that models diffusional-thermal combustion with stepwise ignition-temperature kinetics and fractional reaction order 0 < alpha < 1. We turn the free interface problem into a scalar free boundary problem coupled with an integral equation. The main intermediary step is to reduce the scalar problem to the study of a non-Lipschitz vector field in dimension 2. The latter is treated by qualitative topological methods based on the Poincare-Bendixson Theorem. The phase portrait is determined and the existence of a stable manifold at the origin is proved. A significant result is that the settling time to reach the origin is finite, meaning that the trailing interface is finite in contrast to the case alpha = 1, but in accordance with alpha = 0. Finally, the integro-differential system is solved via a fixed-point method. (C) 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.