title: Regularization of moving boundaries in a laplacian field by a mixed Dirichlet-Neumann boundary condition: exact results.
abstract: The dynamics of ionization fronts that generate a conducting body are in the simplest approximation equivalent to viscous fingering without regularization. Going beyond this approximation, we suggest that ionization fronts can be modeled by a mixed Dirichlet-Neumann boundary condition. We derive exact uniformly propagating solutions of this problem in 2D and construct a single partial differential equation governing small perturbations of these solutions. For some parameter value, this equation can be solved analytically, which shows rigorously that the uniformly propagating solution is linearly convectively stable and that the asymptotic relaxation is universal and exponential in time.
authors.affiliation: CWI, P.O. Box 94079, 1090 GB Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Bernard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Meulenbroek
authors.forename: Ute
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Ebert
authors.forename: Lothar
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Schäfer