Intuitive and counterintuitive energy flux (Q1766888)

The author considers the estimation of flux and absolute flux of energy across hypersurfaces for regular solutions to heat, wave and Schrödinger equations in \(\mathbb{R}_t \times \mathbb{R}^{d}_x\), \(d \geq 1\). The main result is that the absolute flux of energy across hypersurfaces is as large as one wants compared to the total energy. As is well-known, the regular solutions of the wave equation \(u_{tt}-\Delta_x u=0\) satisfy the conservation law \(\partial_t e(t,x)+\nabla_x \cdot f(t,x)=0\), and hence, \(E(t)=E(0)\), where \(e(t,x)\) is the energy density: \(e(t,x)=\frac12 (| u_t |^2+| \nabla_x u |^2)\), \(f(t,x)\) is the flux of energy: \(f(t,x)=\Re (\overline{u}_t\nabla_x u)\), and \(E(t)\) is the total energy: \(E(t)=\int_{\mathbb{R}^{d}_x} e(t,x) \, dx\). Then he proves that for any \(\mu>0\) and large \(N\), \[ \int_{[0,\mu]\times \{x_1=0\}} \left| \Re \left(\overline{u_t} \frac{\partial u}{\partial x_1}\right) \right| \,dt\, dx_2 \cdots d x_d \geq N E(0) \tag{1} \] holds provided that \(d \geq 2\). Inequality (1) implies that the absolute value of flux across the hyperplane \(\{x_1=0\}\) during the time \(t \in [0,\mu]\) is as large as we want compared to the total energy. In the case when \(d=1\), (1) never occurs. Namely, each solution \(u(t,x)\) of a wave equation in \(\mathbb{R}_t \times \mathbb{R}_x\) satisfies \[ \int^{+\infty}_{-\infty} \left| \Re \left(\overline{u_t(t,0)} u_x(t,0) \right) \right| \,dx \leq E(0). \tag{2} \] As to the Schrödinger equation, the similar results are obtained. Contrary to these equations, the nonnegative solution of heat equation \(u_t-\Delta_xu=0\) with initial data \(u(0,x)=d\mu\) (finite Borel measure) always satisfies \[ \int^{+\infty}_{0} \int_{\{x_1=0\}}\left| \frac{\partial u}{\partial x_1} \right| \, dt\,dx^{\prime} \leq \frac12 \int_{\mathbb{R}^d}d | \text{sgn} (x_1) \mu |(x), \quad x^{\prime}=(x_2,\cdots,x_d), \] which implies that the absolute flux never exeeds one half of the energy. This extends the result of \textit{F. W. Gehring} [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 94, 337--364 (1960; Zbl 0090.07703)] concernig with the 1-dimensional heat equation to any dimension \(d \geq 2\).