Critical Traveling Waves in a Flow Reactor Model

The paper deals with a special type of traveling waves in a combustion model. A non-adiabatic case of autocatalytic combustion reaction in one spatial dimension is considered. The existence of critical traveling waves is stated. The critical traveling waves play the role of an intermediate form, they separate the waves of slow burnout and waves corresponding to the thermal explosion. It is shown that the profiles of the critical waves are canards. An asymptotic representation for the speed of the critical traveling wave is obtained.