1. Introduction
Motivated by several papers concerned with the mathematical models describing the dispersal dynamics of the Aedes Aegypt mosquitoes (main vector of dengue, xicungunia, zika, and other similar diseases) [
1,
2,
3] as well as
Anopheles [
4], in two previous papers [
5,
6], the following parabolic reaction-diffusion-advection system has been considered
where the diffusion coefficient
, the reaction-advection term
and the reaction term
are assumed to be analytic functions of their arguments. This system, apart from its mathematical interest, could be considered a quite general model of two interacting species. In this model the species
u can be subjected to advection phenomena, such as wind effects or water currents while the species
v does not feel advection effects and, moreover, does not show diffusive phenomena [
7].
When the advection effects are negligible or absent it is possible to assume the constitutive function
g only depending on
u and
v. Concerned with mosquito models, it might correspond to an infestation in a small region where the wind currents are very weak. It is worthwhile stressing that a system class (
1) with
can model not only the dispersal dynamics of some mosquito species with negligible advection, but it can model the interaction between swimming and swarming populations in the colonies of Proteus Mirabilis [
8,
9,
10] or analogous bacterial colonies.
Having in mind to look for symmetries of systems belonging to the class (
1) and taking into account that a classification with respect to all the constitutive parameters usually brings a big number of cases, several of them without biological meaning, here we focus our attention in the following form of the functions
f and
g [
3,
11]
with
,
,
non zero constants, so that the system (
1) reads
In this way, it is assumed that there is a “weak interaction” of the species
v over the species
u [
12,
13]. It is useful stressing that even though the symmetry approach provides a methodological way to derive exact solutions of non linear system, the symmetry classification with respect to arbitrary constitutive functions, that appear in (
2), could suggest special forms of them of a certain interest for the phenomena under consideration. Even though in the last decades several studies have been devoted to reaction diffusion equations only few papers have been devoted to the symmetry classification of
non-linear systems like (
1) or (
2) with advection (convection) terms. It is possible instead to find, as in [
14], a complete description of Lie symmetries for a class of diffusion systems with convection terms in both equations. Moreover, the paper [
15] shows Lie symmetry derivation for a class of systems, which includes cases having a structure similar to system (
1).
Here we do not follow the classical Lie criterion approach in order to get the infinitesimal coordinates of the Lie symmetry generators [
16,
17]. We apply a projection theorem introduced in [
18] (see for some applications, e.g., [
19,
20,
21]), that allows us to reduce the plethora of calculations, by using a known equivalence generator. In our case we use a
weak equivalence generator [
22] for class (
1) derived in [
5].
This paper is organized as follow. In the next section by applying a projection theorem we write the classifying equations (for the system (
2)) and the principal Lie algebra is shown. In
Section 3 the classifying equations are discussed and the extensions of
are derived. In
Section 4, after having specialized the form of the constitutive function
H in a suitable way, we reduced the system by using the corresponding admitted generator. Then some wide classes of special exact solutions are obtained. The conclusions are given in
Section 5.
2. Symmetries. A Projection Theorem
A
projection theorem [
18], reconsidered in [
22] affirms:
Theorem 1. be an infinitesimal weak equivalence generator for the systems (1), then the operatorwhich corresponds to the projection of Y on the space , is an infinitesimal symmetry generator of the system (2) if, and only if, the constitutive equations, specifying the forms of and h, are invariant with respect to Y. For the system (
2) the constitutive equations are given by
Applying Theorem 1 we need to require the invariance of (
5) with respect to the generator (
3) imposing that the functions
f,
g and
h are given by (
5). Specifically from
we get
that is
Then the operator
is an infinitesimal symmetry generator of the system
if the functions
,
,
, and
satisfy the conditions (
8), (
10), and (
12). Taking into account that
, from (
8) we get immediately
with
,
, and
arbitrary constants. Substituting these forms of
and
in the remaining conditions (
10), and (
12), we get
We observe that the constants
and
do not appear in these conditions. Moreover, for arbitrary forms of the functions
and
these conditions are satisfied only if
then the Principal Lie Algebra
(see, e.g., [
18]) (the algebra of all the Lie symmetries that leave the system (
2) invariant for any form of the functions
, and
) is spanned by the following translation generators:
3. Extensions of
In this section, we are interested in getting extensions of the Principal Lie Algebra for the system (
2). Then our goal is to find special forms of the functions
, and
, such that the conditions (
15) and (16) are satisfied for
,
, and
not all zero. The discussion of (
15) and (16) leads to a classification with respect to the functions
and
.
From (
15) we get
so we can rewrite (
15) in the form
from where we are able to derive
By solving (
21) and (22) we get
By substituting these results in (23) and (16) we get the following coupled classifying equations for the functions
and
It is possible to ascertain that Equation (
25) brings to the discussion of the following cases
- 3.1.
;
- 3.2.
, that implies ;
- 3.3.
, .
3.1.
From (
25) we get, for arbitrary
with
,
so we can write (26) as
If
we do not obtain any extension of the principal Lie algebra. Then, for
, (
28) is satisfied only when
with
arbitrary function of
.
So the system
admits the following additional generator
Remark 1. If , it is possible to verify that the change of variable maps the system (2) in the following equivalent form Remark 2. Of course the system (33), when assumes the form with , admits the following extension with respect to (18) Remark 3. From Remarks 1 and 2, without loss of generality, we can assume in the system (30), as well as in the generator (31). 3.2. ,
In this case, the system (
2) reads,
with
constant. As
and
, from (26) we have two possibilities
- 3.2.1.
;
- 3.2.2.
.
We analyze them separately.
3.2.1. ,
From (26), by solving with respect to
, it follows
where
is an arbitrary function of
x and
, with
.
Then, (
35) becomes
admitting the additional generator
so the extended algebra is infinite dimensional.
3.2.2. ,
In this case, we recall that
, and, in order to have extensions of the principal Lie algebra, it must be
. Then by differentiating the condition (26) with respect to
u we can get
then
and
Going back to (26) we can write
that implies
In conclusion, when the function
H assumes the form
with
,
constitutive functions and
constitutive constant, the system admits the additional generator
with
arbitrary function. Even in this case the extended algebra is infinite dimensional.
3.3.
In this case, the system (
2) assumes the form
From (26) we have still two cases
- 3.3.1
;
- 3.3.2
.
We analyze them separately.
3.3.1. ,
In this case, from (26), we get
with
then the system
admits two additional generators:
3.3.2. ,
In this last case, deriving appropriately the condition (26), after some calculations, we are able to carry out the following subcases.
with arbitrary constitutive function and , , k constitutive constants.
The system admits two additional generators, the generator
and the generator
where
is an arbitrary function. Even in this case, the extended algebra is infinite dimensional.
where
and
are arbitrary constitutive functions with
. It is possible to ascertain that in this case the system admits the following additional generator
The results of this section are summarized in the
Table 1.
4. Reduced Systems and Invariant Solutions
In this section we focus our attention in the subclass of systems (
2) of the form
with
arbitrary function of
, and
arbitrary function with
.
Previously in the
Section 3.1 we have verified that the system (
52) admits the additional generator
After having taken into account the remarks of
Section 3.1, without loss of generality, we can assume
.
However, for sake of readability we prefer to use the new variable
. Then the system (
52) reads
In this way it is clear that the results hold for any function with .
By using the invariant surface conditions corresponding to the generator (
34) we derive
then (
54) is reduced to the following ODE system in the new dependent variables
and
Remark 4. By identifying with , we observe that the reduced system (55) is also the reduced system of the system (52) for which the similarity variables corresponding to the generator (53) are while v is implicitly defined from In order to look for exact solutions of the reduced system (
55), we need to specialize the form of the constitutive function
. In the following we assume
of the form
with
(
) real constitutive constants.
So the system (
52) becomes
while the reduced system reads
It is a simple matter to ascertain that this system admits the following particular solutions:
If
and
,
that imply the following solution
Taking into account (
32) we are able to write
where
denotes the inverse function of
, so
If, for instance,
, then the solution (
61) becomes
In another way it is possible to derive
v by taking into account (
32) where
v is implicitly definite by
If
,
that imply the following spatially homogeneous solution
If
,
that imply the following spatially homogeneous solution
For
and
arbitrary, we get
that imply the following temporally homogeneous solution
We wish to recall that, being our system invariant with respect to translations in
t and
x, it is possible to put in all solutions
5. Conclusions
This paper deals with the class of reaction-diffusion systems of PDEs (
2). These systems are studied in the framework of symmetry methods in order to perform a classification of the different forms of the constitutive parameter functions
and
that allow to get some extensions of the principal Lie algebra. We have discussed the classifying Equations (
8), (
15) and (16) for the constitutive functions
and
obtained by applying a projection theorem where we used the
weak equivalence generator (
3) of the class (
1).
It is useful stressing that in our classification the function is arbitrary or constant, while the form of the function , even if assigned, is depending on arbitrary constitutive functions, that give us more degrees of freedom in the selection of cases of interest.
Between the cases of extensions of
carried out, we considered the system (
52) admitting the additional generator
We remarked that as
is an arbitrary invertible function by a suitable change of variable it is possible to write (
52) and its reduced system in a more simple form.
Several and wide classes of solutions have been obtained by specializing .