Propagation of stationary exothermic transition front with nonstationary oscillatory tail

Abstract

We consider a propagation of exotermic transition front in a discrete conservative oscillatory chain. Adequate description of such fronts is a key point in prediction of important transient phenomena, including phase transitions and topochemical reactions. Due to constant energy supply, the transition front can propagate with high velocities, precluding any continuum-based considerations. Stationary propagation of the front is accompanied by formation of a non-stationary oscillatory tail with complicated internal structure. We demonstrate that the structure of the oscillatory tail is related to a relationship between phase and group velocities of the oscillations. We suggest also an approximate analytic procedure, which allows one to determine all basic characteristics of the propagation process: velocity and width of the front, frequency and amplitude of the after-front oscillations, as well as the structure of the oscillatory tail. As an example, we consider a simple case of biharmonic double-well on-site potential. Numeric results nicely conform to the analytic predictions.