Nonclassical Turing instabilities induced by superdiffusive transport in FitzHugh-Nagumo dynamics

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Rizzo, Rossella, Gambino, Gaetana, Sciacca, Vincenzo, Sammartino, Marco
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Rizzo, Rossella
Gambino, Gaetana
Sciacca, Vincenzo
Sammartino, Marco
author_facet Rizzo, Rossella
Gambino, Gaetana
Sciacca, Vincenzo
Sammartino, Marco
contents We investigate diffusion-driven instabilities in a FitzHugh-Nagumo reaction-diffusion system with superdiffusive transport, modeled by fractional Laplacian operators with different diffusion orders for the activator and the inhibitor. A linear stability analysis yields explicit expressions for the instability threshold and the critical wavenumber and shows that superdiffusion modifies the band of unstable modes and the characteristic spatial scale of emerging patterns. We show that the threshold depends only on the ratio of the fractional exponents and on the kinetic parameters, while the spatial scale is controlled by the diffusion orders and the domain size. When the diffusion orders differ, spatial instabilities may occur even in regimes where the activator diffuses faster than the inhibitor, due to the combined effect of diffusion rates, anomalous scaling and system size. This leads to instability mechanisms that depart from the classical activator-inhibitor framework. A weakly nonlinear analysis near threshold provides the amplitude equation governing nonlinear saturation and reveals that superdiffusion promotes subcritical behavior. We also analyze the interaction between stationary and oscillatory instabilities near Turing-Hopf codimension-two points. All analytical results are supported by numerical simulations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_03254
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Nonclassical Turing instabilities induced by superdiffusive transport in FitzHugh-Nagumo dynamics
Rizzo, Rossella
Gambino, Gaetana
Sciacca, Vincenzo
Sammartino, Marco
Pattern Formation and Solitons
Mathematical Physics
We investigate diffusion-driven instabilities in a FitzHugh-Nagumo reaction-diffusion system with superdiffusive transport, modeled by fractional Laplacian operators with different diffusion orders for the activator and the inhibitor. A linear stability analysis yields explicit expressions for the instability threshold and the critical wavenumber and shows that superdiffusion modifies the band of unstable modes and the characteristic spatial scale of emerging patterns. We show that the threshold depends only on the ratio of the fractional exponents and on the kinetic parameters, while the spatial scale is controlled by the diffusion orders and the domain size. When the diffusion orders differ, spatial instabilities may occur even in regimes where the activator diffuses faster than the inhibitor, due to the combined effect of diffusion rates, anomalous scaling and system size. This leads to instability mechanisms that depart from the classical activator-inhibitor framework. A weakly nonlinear analysis near threshold provides the amplitude equation governing nonlinear saturation and reveals that superdiffusion promotes subcritical behavior. We also analyze the interaction between stationary and oscillatory instabilities near Turing-Hopf codimension-two points. All analytical results are supported by numerical simulations.
title Nonclassical Turing instabilities induced by superdiffusive transport in FitzHugh-Nagumo dynamics
topic Pattern Formation and Solitons
Mathematical Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.03254