Blowup stability of solutions of the nonlinear heat equation with a large life span

We study the Cauchy problem for the nonlinear heat equation u_t-?u=|u|^p-1u in R^N. The initial data is of the form u₀=λ?, where ?∈C₀(R^N) is fixed and λ>0. We first take 1<p<p_f, where p_f is the Fujita critical exponent, and ?∈C₀(R^N)∩L¹(R^N) with nonzero mean. We show that u(t) blows up for λ small, extending the H. Fujita blowup result for sign-changing solutions. Next, we consider 1<p<p_s, where p_s is the Sobolev critical exponent, and ?(x) decaying as |x|^-σ at infinity, where p<1+2/σ. We also prove that u(t) blows up when λ is small, extending a result of T. Lee and W. Ni. For both cases, the solution enjoys some stable blowup properties. For example, there is single point blowup even if ? is not radial.