Finite-dimensional description of convective reaction-diffusion equations (Q1199672)

The author studies the dynamical system defined by the nonlinear parabolic equation \[ u_ t=u_{xx}+f(u)_ x+g(u)+h(x), \qquad t>0, \quad 0<x<L, \] with boundary condition, which includes many important equations as special cases. The method of inertial manifold theory is very powerful to study long time behavior of reaction diffusion equations and many successful results have been obtained. However the usual theory of inertial manifold can not be applied to this type equations because of some difficulty brought in by the nonlinear term \(f(u)_ x\). Because it breaks the spectral gap condition which is necessary in the inertial manifold theory. The author got a nice idea to remove such a difficulty. He considered the transformation of the variable \(u\mapsto(u,u_ x,f(u))\) and had an evolution system which has the same long time dynamics as the original equation and satisfies the appropriate gap condition, with which an inertial manifold theory works. His method also works for the two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equation.