Fronts in reactive convection: bounds, stability and instability

Abstract

We consider front propagation in a reactive Boussinesq system in an infinite vertical strip. We establish nonlinear stability of planar fronts for narrow domains when the Rayleigh number is not too large. Planar fronts are shown to be linearly unstable with respect to long wavelength perturbations if the Rayleigh number is sufficiently large. We also prove uniform bounds on the bulk burning rate and the Nusselt number in the KPP reaction case.