Effects of cross-diffusion on Turing patterns in a reaction-diffusion Schnakenberg model

In this paper the Turing pattern formation mechanism of a two component reaction-diffusion system modeling the Schnakenberg chemical reaction coupled to linear cross-diffusion terms is studied. The linear cross-diffusion terms favors the destabilization of the constant steady state and the mechanism of pattern formation with respect to the standard linear diffusion case, as shown in Madzvamuse et al. (J. Math. Biol. 2014). Since the subcritical Turing bifurcations of reaction-diffusion systems lead to spontaneous onset of robust, finite-amplitude localized patterns, here a detailed investigation of the Turing pattern forming region is performed to show how the diffusion coefficients for both species (the activator and the inhibitor) influence the occurrence of supercritical or subcritical bifurcations. The weakly nonlinear (WNL) multiple scales analysis is employed to derive the equations for the amplitude of the Turing patterns and to distinguish the supercritical and the subcritical pattern region, both in 1D and 2D domains. Numerical simulations are employed to confirm the WNL theoretical predictions through which a classification of the patterns (squares, rhombi, rectangle and hexagons) is obtained. In particular, due to the hysteretic nature of the subcritical bifurcation, we observe the phenomenon of pattern transition from rolls to hexagons, in agreement with the bifurcation diagram.