wiki:u/johannjc/galactic_colonization

Version 3 (modified by Jonathan, 7 years ago) ( diff )

Consider the diffusion equation for settled systems in the free-streaming limit (which I think should be appropriate)

where is the free streaming velocity roughly corresponding to the thermal velocity. (For flux-limited radiation diffusion, this is just the speed of light).

We can then combine that with a logistic style source term that accounts for local probe activity

We then normalize the density of settled systems by the density of total systems

which gives us

We then look for self-similar solutions of the form

where

Upon substituting that in to the continuity equation we arrive at

or

which is just a logistic curve with length scale where is the thermal speed and is the speed of the front (maximum speed from maxwellian).

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