On the role of diffusivity in some stable equilibria of a diffusion equation (Q1300090)

The paper is concerned with the existence of spatially inhomogeneous stable stationary solutions (called patterns) of the evolution equation \[ \begin{aligned} &\frac{\partial v}{\partial t}=\text{div}[k(x)\nabla v]+f(v),\qquad (t,x)\in\mathbb{R}^+\times \Omega,\\ & \frac{\partial v}{\partial \nu}=0\qquad \text{on }\mathbb{R}^+\times \partial\Omega\end{aligned} \] where \(\Omega\) is a bounded domain in \(\mathbb{R}^N\) with boundary \(\partial\Omega\). The major assumptions are that the diffusivity \(k\) is positive in \(\Omega\) and the continuously differentiable functions \(f\) satisfy \(f(a)=f(b)=0\), \(a<0<b\); \(f'(0)v\leq f(v)<0\), \(a < v < 0\); \(0 < f(v)\leq f'(0)v\), \(0 < v < b\), together with a technical growth condition. It is known that if \(\Omega\) is convex and \(k\) is constant then the problem has no patterns. The main result in this paper is to determine a class of functions \(k\) which allow patterns regardless of the shape of \(\Omega\). The given \(k\)'s are large on subsets of \(\Omega\) separated by an \(n-1\) dimensional manifold on which \(k\) is small. The existence proof is variational in nature and proceeds along standard lines once the domain of the functional is chosen.