Travelling waves of iodate-arsenous-acid reaction with a constant electric field

•We consider iodate-arsenous-acid reaction of mixed order.•We study the existence and nonexistence of travelling waves.•Sharp explicit bounds are derived for existence of travelling waves.•We give the numerical simulations to illustrate our main results.

The effects of applying a constant electric field E to an iodate-arsenous-acid reaction of mixed order are considered, where the reacting species, A and B  , are present. The resulting equations are studied in detail by obtaining conditions for the existence and nonexistence of travelling waves. By using a novel approach, explicit bounds c∗(D,E)c∗(D,E) and c∗(D,E)c∗(D,E) are derived such that there is a unique travelling wave of every speed c⩾c∗(D,E)c⩾c∗(D,E) and there does not exist any travelling wave of speed c