Cross-diffusion effects on stationary pattern formation in the FitzHugh-Nagumo model

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>We investigate the formation of stationary patterns in the FitzHugh-Nagumo reaction-diffusion system with linear cross-diffusion terms. We focus our analysis on the effects of cross-diffusion on the Turing mechanism. Linear stability analysis indicates that positive values of the inhibitor cross-diffusion enlarge the region in the parameter space where a Turing instability is excited. A sufficiently large cross-diffusion coefficient of the inhibitor removes the requirement imposed by the classical Turing mechanism that the inhibitor must diffuse faster than the activator. In an extended region of the parameter space a new phenomenon occurs, namely the exis…