Explicit time stepping for bounded reaction diffusion ($\Vert (I+k{D}_h+k{V}_h{)}^n\Vert \le e^{Ank}$)

Let $D_h$ be the scaled Dirichlet discrete Laplacian and $V_h$ a bounded diagonal reaction matrix. If $0\le k/h_x^2\le 1/2$, the heat update $H_h=I+k{D}_h$ is contractive in both the maximum norm and the mesh-weighted L2 norm. For $\Vert V_h\Vert \le A$,This proves finite-time mesh-uniform stability without requiring the full update to have nonnegative entries or to be contractive. Negative reaction terms can destroy nonnegativity at the endpoint $k/h_x^2=1/2$, so it is the heat part alone that is treated as a nonnegative contraction.