Numerical continuation for a fast-reaction system and its cross-diffusion limit

Abstract In this paper we investigate the bifurcation structure of the cross-diffusion Shigesada–Kawasaki–Teramoto model (SKT) in the triangular form and in the weak competition regime, and of a corresponding fast-reaction system in 1D and 2D domains via numerical continuation methods. We show that the software can be exploited to treat cross-diffusion systems, reproducing the already computed bifurcation diagrams on 1D domains. We show the convergence of the bifurcation structure obtained selecting the growth rate as bifurcation parameter. Then, we compute the bifurcation diagram on a 2D rectangular domain providing the shape of the solutions along the branches and linking the results with the linearized analysis. In 1D and 2D, we pay particular attention to the fast-reaction limit by always computing sequences of bifurcation diagrams as the time-scale separation parameter tends to zero. We show that the bifurcation diagram undergoes major deformations once the fast-reaction systems limits onto the cross-diffusion singular limit. Furthermore, we find evidence for time-periodic solutions by detecting Hopf bifurcations, we characterize several regions of multi-stability, and improve our understanding of the shape of patterns in 2D for the SKT model.