The Gunn effect consists of time-periodic oscillations of the current flowing through an external purely resistive circuit mediated by solitary wave dynamics of the electric field on an attached appropriate semiconductor. By means of a new asymptotic analysis, it is argued that Gunn-like behavior occurs in specific classes of model equations. As an illustration, an example related to the constrained Cahn-Allen equation is analyzed.
Categories: cond-mat.stat-mech cond-mat.soft