We investigate the stability of traveling-pulse solutions to the stochastic FitzHugh–Nagumo equations with additive noise. Special attention is given to the effect of small noise on the classical deterministically stable fast traveling pulse. Our method is based on adapting the velocity of the traveling wave by solving a scalar stochastic ordinary differential equation (SODE) and tracking perturbations to the wave meeting a system of a scalar stochastic partial differential equation (SPDE) coupled to a scalar ordinary differential equation (ODE). This approach has been recently employed by Krüger and Stannat (Nonlinear Anal. 162 (2017) 197–223) for scalar stochastic bistable reaction–diffusion equations such as the Nagumo equation. A main difference in our situation of an SPDE coupled to an ODE is that the linearization has essential spectrum parallel to the imaginary axis and thus only generates a strongly continuous semigroup. Furthermore, the linearization around the traveling wave is not self-adjoint anymore, so that fluctuations around the wave cannot be expected to be orthogonal in a corresponding inner product. We demonstrate that this problem can be overcome by making use of Riesz instead of orthogonal spectral projections as recently employed in a series of papers by Hamster and Hupkes in case of analytic semigroups. We expect that our approach can also be applied to traveling waves and other patterns in more general situations such as systems of SPDEs with linearizations only generating a strongly continuous semigroup. This provides a relevant generalization as these systems are prevalent in many applications.

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Estimates for sample paths of fast–slow stochastic ordinary differential equations have become a key mathematical tool relevant for theory and applications. In particular, there have been breakthroughs by Berglund and Gentz to prove sharp exponential error estimates. In this paper, we take the first steps in order to generalise this theory to fast–slow stochastic partial differential equations. In a simplified setting with a natural decomposition into low- and high-frequency modes, we demonstrate that for a short-time period the probability for the corresponding sample path to leave a neighbourhood around the stable slow manifold of the system is exponentially small as well.@en

We are interested in a complete characterization of the contact-line singularity of thin-film flows for zero and nonzero contact angles. By treating the model problem of source-type self-similar solutions, we demonstrate that this singularity can be understood by the study of invariant manifolds of a suitable dynamical system. In particular, we prove regularity results for singular expansions near the contact line for a wide class of mobility exponents and for zero and nonzero dynamic contact angles. Key points are the reduction to center manifolds and identifying resonance conditions at equilibrium points. The results are extended to radially-symmetric source-type solutions in higher dimensions. Furthermore, we give dynamical systems proofs for the existence and uniqueness of self-similar droplet solutions in the nonzero dynamic contact-angle case.

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