A Liouville-type theorem and the decay of radial solutions of a semilinear heat equation

We consider the semilinear parabolic equation _ut=Δu+u^p$u_t=\mathrm{\Delta }u+u^p$ on R^N${\mathbb{R}}^N$, where the power nonlinearity is subcritical. We first address the question of existence of entire solutions, that is, solutions defined for all x∈R^N$x\in {\mathbb{R}}^N$ and t∈R$t\in \mathbb{R}$. Our main result asserts that there are no positive radially symmetric bounded entire solutions. Then we consider radial solutions of the Cauchy problem. We show that if such a solution is global, that is, defined for all t?0$t?0$, then it necessarily converges to 0, as t→∞$t\to \infty$, uniformly with respect to x∈R^N$x\in {\mathbb{R}}^N$.