Turing bifurcation in a reaction–diffusion system with density-dependent dispersal

Motivated by the recent finding [N. Kumar, G.M. Viswanathan, V.M. Kenkre, Physica A 388 (2009) 3687] that the dynamics of particles undergoing density-dependent nonlinear diffusion shows sub-diffusive behaviour, we study the Turing bifurcation in a two-variable system with this kind of dispersal. We perform a linear stability analysis of the uniform steady state to find the conditions for the Turing bifurcation and compare it with the standard Turing condition in a reaction–diffusion system, where dispersal is described by simple Fickian diffusion. While activator–inhibitor kinetics are a necessary condition for the Turing instability as in standard two-variable systems, the instability can occur even if the diffusion constant of the inhibitor is equal to or smaller than that of the activator. We apply these results to two model systems, the Brusselator and the Gierer–Meinhardt model.