Localized Spatial Structures and Nonlinear Chemical Waves in Dissipative Systems

The problem of chemical instabilities and the subsequent emergence of dissipative structures is studied in the case of systems which are maintained spatially nonuniform. A simple model is analyzed numerically and shown to exhibit, for different ranges of values of the parameters, two types of solution of the kinetic equations: a localized steady state dissipative structure and a time‐dependent solution describing a non‐linear propagating concentration wave. The biological implications of such solutions are briefly discussed.