Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2018/ii/paper-4/14c/solution

The term makes locally autocatalytic, while increasing suppresses this production. Thus is the activator and is the inhibitor.
At a positive spatially homogeneous equilibrium,
Hence and , giving
The reaction Jacobian matrix there is
Because , the trace-determinant stability criterion shows that the spatially uniform reaction kinetics are stable exactly when
For a perturbation proportional to , put . Its growth rates are the eigenvalues of
The trace is in the reaction-stable regime, while the determinant is
A Turing instability occurs exactly when this upward-opening quadratic is negative for some . By the two-species diffusion-driven instability criterion, this requires
Together these reduce to
Thus the unstable region in the -plane lies below the straight line and to the left of .
Inside this region, the unstable squared-wavenumber band is
At the bifurcation boundary the two roots coincide, so
Substituting yields

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