Dynamics of systems on infinite lattices

The dynamics of infinite-dimensional lattice systems is studied. A necessary and sufficient condition for asymptotic compactness of lattice dynamical systems is introduced. It is shown that a lattice system has a global attractor if and only if it has a bounded absorbing set and is asymptotically null. As an application, it is proved that the lattice reaction-diffusion equation has a global attractor in a weighted l² space, which is compact as well as contains traveling waves. The upper semicontinuity of global attractors is also obtained when the lattice reaction-diffusion equation is approached by finite-dimensional systems.     

Hair-triggered instability of radial steady states, spread and extinction in semilinear heat equations

We first study the initial value problem for a general semilinear heat equation. We prove that every bounded nonconstant radial steady state is unstable if the spatial dimension is low (n?10) or if the steady state is flat enough at infinity: the solution of the heat equation either becomes unbounded as t approaches the lifespan, or eventually stays above or below another bounded radial steady state, depending on if the initial value is above or below the first steady state; moreover, the second steady state must be a constant if n?10.Using this instability result, we then prove that every nonconstant radial steady state of the generalized Fisher equation is a hair-trigger for two kinds of dynamical behavior: extinction and spreading. We also prove more criteria on initial values for these types of behavior. Similar results for a reaction-diffusion system modeling an isothermal autocatalytic chemical reaction are also obtained.     

Dynamics in dumbbell domains I. Continuity of the set of equilibria

We analyze the dynamics of a reaction-diffusion equation with homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions in a dumbbell domain. We provide an appropriate functional setting to treat this problem and, as a first step, we show in this paper the continuity of the set of equilibria and of its linear unstable manifolds.     

Traveling waves for non-local delayed diffusion equations via auxiliary equations

In this paper, we study the existence of traveling wave solutions for a class of delayed non-local reaction-diffusion equations without quasi-monotonicity. The approach is based on the construction of two associated auxiliary reaction-diffusion equations with quasi-monotonicity and a profile set in a suitable Banach space by using the traveling wavefronts of the auxiliary equations. Under monostable assumption, by using the Schauder's fixed point theorem, we then show that there exists a constant c_∗>0 such that for each c>c_∗, the equation under consideration admits a traveling wavefront solution with speed c, which is not necessary to be monotonic.     

Uniform attractors for the closed process and applications to the reaction-diffusion equation with dynamical boundary condition

In this paper, we first introduce the concept of a closed process in a Banach space, and we obtain the structure of a uniform attractor of the closed process by constructing a skew product-flow on the extended phase space. Then, the properties of the kernel section of closed process are investigated. Moreover, we prove the existence and structure of the uniform attractor for the reaction-diffusion equation with a dynamical boundary condition in L^p without any restriction on the growth order of the nonlinear term.     

Asymptotic behaviour of nonlocal reaction-diffusion equations

The existence of a global attractor in L²(Ω) is established for a reaction-diffusion equation on a bounded domain Ω in R^d with Dirichlet boundary conditions, where the reaction term contains an operator F:L²(Ω)→L²(Ω) which is nonlocal and possibly nonlinear. Existence of weak solutions is established, but uniqueness is not required. Compactness of the multivalued flow is obtained via estimates obtained from limits of Galerkin approximations. In contrast with the usual situation, these limits apply for all and not just for almost all time instants.     

Itô's formula in UMD Banach spaces and regularity of solutions of the Zakai equation

Using the theory of stochastic integration for processes with values in a UMD Banach space developed recently by the authors, an Itô formula is proved which is applied to prove the existence of strong solutions for a class of stochastic evolution equations in UMD Banach spaces. The abstract results are applied to prove regularity in space and time of the solutions of the Zakai equation.     

Axially asymmetric traveling fronts in balanced bistable reaction-diffusion equations

For a balanced bistable reaction-diffusion equation, an axisymmetric traveling front has been well known. This paper proves that an axially asymmetric traveling front with any positive speed does exist in a balanced bistable reaction-diffusion equation. Our method is as follows. We use a pyramidal traveling front for an unbalanced reaction-diffusion equation whose cross section has a major axis and a minor axis. Preserving the ratio of the major axis and a minor axis to be a constant and taking the balanced limit, we obtain a traveling front in a balanced bistable reaction-diffusion equation. This traveling front is monotone decreasing with respect to the traveling axis, and its cross section is a compact set with a major axis and a minor axis when the constant ratio is not 1.     

Extremal equilibria for monotone semigroups in ordered spaces with application to evolutionary equations

We consider monotone semigroups in ordered spaces and give general results concerning the existence of extremal equilibria and global attractors. We then show some applications of the abstract scheme to various evolutionary problems, from ODEs and retarded functional differential equations to parabolic and hyperbolic PDEs. In particular, we exhibit the dynamical properties of semigroups defined by semilinear parabolic equations in RN with nonlinearities depending on the gradient of the solution. We consider as well systems of reaction-diffusion equations in RN and provide some results concerning extremal equilibria of the semigroups corresponding to damped wave problems in bounded domains or in RN. We further discuss some nonlocal and quasilinear problems, as well as the fourth order Cahn-Hilliard equation.     

Attractors for nonlinear reaction-diffusion systems in unbounded domains via the method of short trajectories

We consider a nonlinear reaction-diffusion equation on the whole space Rd. We prove the well-posedness of the corresponding Cauchy problem in a general functional setting, namely, when the initial datum is uniformly locally bounded in L² only. Then we adapt the short trajectory method to establish the existence of the global attractor and, if d?3, we find an upper bound of its Kolmogorov's ε-entropy.     

Large deviations and approximations for slow-fast stochastic reaction-diffusion equations

A large deviation principle is derived for a class of stochastic reaction-diffusion partial differential equations with slow-fast components. The result shows that the rate function is exactly that of the averaged equation plus the fluctuating deviation which is a stochastic partial differential equation with small Gaussian perturbation. This result also confirms the effectiveness of the approximation of the averaged equation plus the fluctuating deviation to the slow-fast stochastic partial differential equations.     

Existence and uniqueness of traveling waves for non-monotone integral equations with applications

A class of integral equations without monotonicity is investigated. It is shown that there is a spreading speed c^∗>0 for such an integral equation, and that its limiting integral equation admits a unique traveling wave (up to translation) with speed c?c^∗ and no traveling wave with c<c^∗. These results are also applied to some nonlocal reaction-diffusion population models.     

Attractors for reaction-diffusion equations on thin domains whose linear part is non-self-adjoint

For a bounded smooth domain Ω⊂R^N_x+N_y let Ω_?, 0<?, be a family of domains squeezed in y∈R^N_y direction. On Ω_? we consider a reaction-diffusion equation with nonsymmetrical linear part. We show that under natural conditions on the nonlinearity the generated semi-flows have global attractors which in a certain sense have limits, as ?↓0.     

Spherically symmetric internal layers for activator-inhibitor systems II. Stability and symmetry breaking bifurcations

A reaction-diffusion system of activator-inhibitor type is studied on an N-dimensional ball with the homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions. We analyze the stability property of the spherically symmetric solutions and their symmetry-breaking bifurcations into layer solutions which are not spherically symmetric.     

Asymptotic regularity for some dissipative equations

This paper is devoted to proving some asymptotic regularity, for both reaction-diffusion equation with a polynomially growing nonlinearity of arbitrary order and strongly damped wave equation with critical nonlinearity, which excel the sharp regularity allowed by the corresponding stationary equations (equilibrium points). Based on this regularity, the existence of the finite-dimensional global and exponential attractors can be obtained easily.     

Spatially nonhomogeneous equilibrium in a reaction-diffusion system with distributed delay

We consider a reaction-diffusion system with general time-delayed growth rate and kernel functions. The existence and stability of the positive spatially nonhomogeneous steady-state solution are obtained. Moreover, taking minimal time delay τ as the bifurcation parameter, Hopf bifurcation near the steady-state solution is proved to occur at a critical value τ=τ₀. Especially, the Hopf bifurcation is forward and the bifurcated periodic solutions are stable on the center manifold. The general results are applied to competitive and cooperative systems with weak or strong kernel function respectively.     

SPDE in Hilbert space with locally monotone coefficients

The aim of this paper is to extend the usual framework of SPDE with monotone coefficients to include a large class of cases with merely locally monotone coefficients. This new framework is conceptually not more involved than the classical one, but includes many more fundamental examples not included previously. Thus our main result can be applied to various types of SPDEs such as stochastic reaction-diffusion equations, stochastic Burgers type equation, stochastic 2-D Navier-Stokes equation, stochastic p-Laplace equation and stochastic porous media equation with non-monotone perturbations.     

Elliptic equations for measures on infinite dimensional spaces and applications

We introduce and study a new concept of a weak elliptic equation for measures on infinite dimensional spaces. This concept allows one to consider equations whose coefficients are not globally integrable. By using a suitably extended Lyapunov function technique, we derive a priori estimates for the solutions of such equations and prove new existence results. As an application, we consider stochastic Burgers, reaction-diffusion, and Navier-Stokes equations and investigate the elliptic equations for the corresponding invariant measures. Our general theorems yield a priori estimates and existence results for such elliptic equations. We also obtain moment estimates for Gibbs distributions and prove an existence result applicable to a wide class of models. Received: 23 January 2000 / Revised version: 4 October 2000 / Published online: 5 June 2001     

On uniqueness for nonlinear elliptic equation involving the Pucci's extremal operator

In this article we study uniqueness of positive solutions for the nonlinear uniformly elliptic equation in RN, limr→∞u(r)=0, where denotes the Pucci's extremal operator with parameters 0<λ?Λ and p>1. It is known that all positive solutions of this equation are radially symmetric with respect to a point in RN, so the problem reduces to the study of a radial version of this equation. However, this is still a nontrivial question even in the case of the Laplacian (λ=Λ). The Pucci's operator is a prototype of a nonlinear operator in no-divergence form. This feature makes the uniqueness question specially challenging, since two standard tools like Pohozaev identity and global integration by parts are no longer available. The corresponding equation involving is also considered.     

Reaction-diffusion systems coupled at the boundary and the Morse-Smale property

We study an one-dimensional nonlinear reaction-diffusion system coupled on the boundary. Such system comes from modeling problems of temperature distribution on two bars of same length, jointed together, with different diffusion coefficients.We prove the transversality property of unstable and stable manifolds assuming all equilibrium points are hyperbolic. To this end, we write the system as an equation with noncontinuous diffusion coefficient. We then study the nonincreasing property of the number of zeros of a linearized nonautonomous equation as well as the Sturm-Liouville properties of the solutions of a linear elliptic problem.