The Dirichlet boundary problem for a nonlocal Cahn-Hilliard equation (Q2568961)

The paper is devoted to the study of the integro-differential equation \[ \frac{\partial u}{\partial t}=\Delta \left( \int_{\Omega}J(x-y)[u(x)-u(y)]dy +f(u)\right)\;\;in\;\;\Omega_T,\eqno(1) \] with the Dirichlet boundary conditions \[ u=0\;\text{ on } \;S_T,\;\;\;u(x,0)=u_0(x).\eqno(2) \] Here \(\Omega_T=\Omega \times (0,T)\), \(S_T=\partial \Omega \times (0,T)\), \(\Omega\) is a bounded domain in \({\mathbb R}^n\), \(J(-x)=J(x)\) for \(x \in {\mathbb R}^n\), and \(f\) is bistable. The existence, uniqueness and continuous dependence on initial data for classical and generalized solutions of the problem (1)--(2) are established under a strict and a degenerate ellipticity conditions, respectively. The long term behavior of the weak solution in the \(H^1\)-norm is discussed and the existence of a global attractor for weak solutions in some metric space for the one-dimensional case \(n=1\) is proved. Note that equation (1) can be considered as a nonlocal version of the standard Cahn-Hilliard equation; for example, see \textit{P. W. Bates} and \textit{P. C. Fife} [SIAM J. Appl. Math. 53, No. 4, 990--1008 (1993; Zbl 0788.35061)] and \textit{P. W. Bates} and \textit{G. Fusco} [J. Differ. Equations 160, No. 2, 283--356 (2000; Zbl 0990.35016)].