Solutions with internal jump for an autonomous elliptic system of FitzHugh-Nagumo type

Systems of elliptic partial differential equations which are coupled in a noncooperative way, such as the FitzHugh-Nagumo type studied in this paper, in general do not satisfy order preserving properties. This not only results in technical complications but also yields a richer solution structure. We prove the existence of multiple nontrivial solutions. In particular we show that there exists a solution with boundary layer type behaviour, and we will give evidence that this autonomous system for a certain range of parameters has a solution with both a boundary and an internal layer. The analysis uses results from bifurcation theory, variational methods, as well as some pointwise a priori estimates. The final section contains some numerically obtained results.