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In this paper we study the propagation of a planar traveling wave in a nonisothermal autocatalytic reaction diffusion system. This is done by performing a series of molecular dynamics simulations for different densities and heat of reactions. In the special case where the reaction is isothermal, it is shown that the molecular dynamics simulation qualitatively resembles the approximative macroscopic description that is based on the reaction diffusion equation. Simulations for different densities and heat releases further show that the speed of propagation is not simply the minimum speed of the corresponding macroscopic equation and that the speed is always constant even though the Lewis number is greater than unity. © 2003 American Institute of Physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here we study a derivative of the Lotka-Volterra reaction diffusion mechanism using the framework of molecular dynamics. First, we perform a series of simulations in one and two dimensions and we find that there exists a critical correlation length in both cases. This means that for domain lengths below this critical correlation length the system will show spatial homogeneous oscillations, whereas for systems with domain lengths larger than the critical correlation length spatial concentration gradients will emerge and the temporal oscillations will be wiped out. We then show, as a main result, that the critical correlation length is smaller in two dimensions than in one dimension, which is in contrast to what is found in, for example, the Poincaré model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]