title: Travelling fronts of the CO oxidation on Pd(111) with coverage-dependent diffusion.
abstract: In this work, we study a surface reaction on Pd(111) crystals under ultra-high-vacuum conditions that can be modeled by two coupled reaction-diffusion equations. In the bistable regime, the reaction exhibits travelling fronts that can be observed experimentally using photo electron emission microscopy. The spatial profile of the fronts reveals a coverage-dependent diffusivity for one of the species. We propose a method to solve the nonlinear eigenvalue problem and compute the direction and the speed of the fronts based on a geometrical construction in phase-space. This method successfully captures the dependence of the speed on control parameters and diffusivities.
authors.affiliation: Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias Aplicadas, Universidad de los Andes, Monseñor Alvaro del Portillo 12455, Las Condes, Santiago, Chile.
authors.forename: Jaime
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cisternas
authors.affiliation: Physics of Fluids, University of Twente, Drienerlolaan 5, 7522 NB Enschede, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Karpitschka
authors.affiliation: Institut für Integrierte Naturwissenschaften - Physik, Universität Koblenz-Landau, 56070 Koblenz, Germany.
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wehner