Instability of spikes in the presence of conservation laws (Q638714)

The authors study the system of two coupled equations: a conservation law and a scalar reaction-diffusion equation. The system is written for two scalar variables \(u\) and \(v\) as follows: \[ \begin{cases} u_t = \left(a(u,v) u_x + b(u,v) v_x\right)_x, \\ v_t = v_{xx} + f(u,v), \end{cases} \quad \quad t \geq 0, \;\; x \in \mathbb{R}. \] Here the functions \(a\), \(b\), and \(f\) are of class \(C^3(\mathbb{R}^2,\mathbb{R})\) and \(a(u,v) \geq a_0 > 0\) for all \((u,v) \in \mathbb{R}^2\) in order to ensure well-posedness of the system on appropriate function spaces. The first equation is a conservation law because \(\int u(t,x) dx\) is independent of time under suitable decay conditions. The system of equations includes the Keller-Segel model for chemotaxis, phase-field models, and models for chemical reactions in closed chemical reactors. The authors are interested in spikes that are asymptotic to solutions that are stable for the pure kinetics. Under the assumption that a spike solution \((u^*,v^*)\) exists, the authors prove that the spike solutions are always unstable when considered as solutions on the unbounded real axis in the space of bounded uniformly continuous functions. The instability also holds in other function spaces, such as \(L^p\) spaces, and it manifests in the existence of a real positive eigenvalue in the spectrum of the linearization of the system of equations at the spike solution. As a corollary, any given spike is unstable when considered on a sufficiently large domain with Neumann boundary conditions.