A principle of reduced stability for reaction-diffusion equations (Q1268557)

This paper concerns initial-boundary value problems for reaction-diffusion equations of the type \[ u'+ Au+ F(u,\lambda)= 0.\tag{1} \] Here \(A\) is a positive symmetric second-order elliptic differential operator in divergence form, and \([F(u,\lambda)](x)= f(x,u(x),\lambda)\) is a Nemyckij operator generated by a function \(f\in C^1(\Omega\times \mathbb{R}\times \mathbb{R}^m)\), where \(\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^n\) is the space domain, and \(\lambda\in \mathbb{R}^m\) is the bifurcation parameter. It is assumed that there exist positive constants \(c_1\) and \(c_2\) such that for all \(x\in\Omega\), \(u\in\mathbb{R}\) and \(\lambda\in \mathbb{R}^m\) it holds \(-c_1\leq\partial_u f(x,u,\lambda)\leq c_2\). For given \(\mu> c_1\) let \(W\) be the subspace of \(L^2(\Omega)\) corresponding to the eigenvalues \(\lambda<\mu\) of \(A\), and let \(P: L^2(\Omega)\to W\) be the orthogonal projector. Then the infinite-dimensional Lyapunov-Schmidt equation \(Aw+ (I-P)F(v+ w,\lambda)\), \(v\in W^{\perp}\), \(w\in W\) can be uniquely solved with respect to \(w\), \(w= \sigma(v,\lambda)\), for all \(v\) and \(\lambda\) (because it is continuous, monoton and coercive). So the author gets the finite-dimensional ``nonlocal'' Lyapunov-Schmidt bifurcation equation \[ Av+ PF(v+ \sigma(v,\lambda), \lambda)= 0,\quad v\in W^{\perp}. \] The main result states that the number of negative (resp. zero) eigenvalues of the linearized operator \(A+ \partial_uF(v+ \sigma(v, \lambda),\lambda)\) is identical to the corresponding number of the linearization of the bifurcation equation in the corresponding point. In particular, a stationary solution to (1) is asymptotically stable iff the corresponding stationary solution to the bifurcation equation is asymptotically stable. For that the gradient structure of the equations is essentially used.