Uniform global attractors for non-isothermal viscous and non-viscous Cahn-Hilliard equations with dynamic boundary conditions (Q1015091)

This paper studies the long time behaviour of a model of non-isothermal phase separation where the order parameter \(\varphi\) is governed by a viscous or non viscous Cahn-Hilliard type equation and the evolution of the temperature \(\theta\) is governed by the heat equation. Nonlinear boundary conditions are considered for the order parameter while Dirichlet, Neumann or Robin boundary conditions are used for the temperature. A number of parameters are included in the model, the most important of which are the viscosity coefficient \(\alpha\), a small relaxation parameter \(\varepsilon\) related to the temporal scales of temperature variation, and a small latent heat coefficient \(\delta\). The relevant system of PDEs assumes the form \[ \partial_t\varphi = k_1\Delta \mu, \] \[ \mu=\alpha \partial_t\varphi- \rho_0\Delta \varphi+ F_1'(\varphi)- \delta\theta, \] \[ \varepsilon\partial_t\theta- k_2\Delta \theta= -\delta\partial_t\varphi \] for \(x\in \Omega\) (\(\Omega\) is a bounded domain in \(\mathbb R^3\), with smooth boundary) with nonlinear boundary conditions \[ \partial_n\mu=0 \] \[ \partial_t\varphi=d\Delta_\Gamma\varphi- \partial_n\varphi- \beta\varphi- F_2'(\varphi), \] for \(x\in\partial \Omega\) and linear Dirichlet, Neumann or Robin boundary conditions for \(\theta\). Choosing a suitable phase space \(\mathbb Y^\alpha_K\), depending on the choice of boundary conditions (but related in general to \(H^2(\Omega)\)), the authors show that the model generate a strongly continuous semigroup The proof is based on delicate and complicated a priori estimates (especially in the case of Neumann conditions), allowing one to pass from the case of strictly positive parameters to the case of vanishing parameters. Based on the above results it is shown that the semigroup possesses an upper semicontinuous family of global attractors, depending on the parameters \(\varepsilon, \delta, \alpha\), denoted by \(\{{\mathcal A}_{\varepsilon, \delta, \alpha}\}_{\varepsilon, \delta, \alpha >0}\). The dimension of these attractors is finite for appropriate values of the parameters. Finally, the behaviour of the family \(\{{\mathcal A}_{\varepsilon, \delta, \alpha}\}_{\varepsilon, \delta, \alpha >0}\) as the parameters tend to 0 is studied. It is shown that \({\mathcal A}_{\varepsilon,\delta, \alpha} \rightarrow {\mathcal A}_{0,0,\alpha}\) for all \(\alpha >0\) as \(\varepsilon, \delta \rightarrow 0\), and \({\mathcal A}_{\varepsilon,\delta, \alpha} \rightarrow {\mathcal A}_{0,0,0}\) where the convergence takes place in the sense of the Hausdorff semidistance in a suitable Hilbert space. By \({\mathcal A}_{0,0,\alpha}\) we denote the lifting of the global attractor for the viscous (\(\alpha>0\)) and non viscous (\(\alpha =0\)) Cahn-Hilliard equation. For certain parameter values the existence of exponential attractors is also established.