Critical length for a quenching problem with nonlocal singularity (Q1268667)

We study the following initial-boundary-value problem for the nonlocal semilinear heat equation \[ w_s=w_{yy}+\bigl\| w(\cdot,s) \bigr\|^q (1-w)^{-\beta}, \quad 0<y<a,\;s>0, \] with zero Dirichlet boundary condition and with the initial condition \(w(y,0)=w_0(y)\), \(0<y<a\), where \(a>0\), \(q>0\), \(\beta>0\), \(0\leq w_0(y)<1\) for \(y\in[0,a]\), and the norm \(\|\cdot\|\) is defined by \[ \bigl\| w(\cdot,s) \bigr\|= \int^a_0 \bigl | w(y,s) \bigr| dy. \] Our main purpose is to study the critical length(s) of this nonlocal problem. In this paper, we shall restrict our attention to the case where \(\beta\leq 1\). We summarize the main results of this paper as follows. 1. Suppose that \(\beta=1\). Then the following hold: (a) For \(q=1\), there are no positive stationary solutions if \(\varepsilon\geq 12\); and there is exactly one positive stationary solution if \(\varepsilon<12\). (b) If \(1<q\leq 2+2\theta^2_0\), then there is exactly one positive stationary solution for \(\varepsilon>0\). (Here \(\theta_0\) is a positive constant defined in Lemma 3.2 below.) 2. Suppose that \(0<\beta<1\). Then the following hold: (a) For \(q=1\), there are no positive stationary solutions if \(\varepsilon\geq 12\) or \(0<\varepsilon\leq 4(1-\beta)(3+\beta)/(1+\beta)^2\), and there is exactly one positive stationary solution if \(4(1-\beta)(3+\beta)/(1+ \beta)^2< \varepsilon <12\). (b) For \(1<q\leq 2\), there is exactly one positive stationary solution if \(\varepsilon> 2^{3-q}(1-\beta)\) \((3+\beta)/(1+\beta)^2\), and there are no positive stationary solutions if \(0<\varepsilon \leq 2^{3-q}(1-\beta)\) \((3+ \beta)/(1+\beta)^2\). \(0<\beta<1\) and \(q=1\), there are two critical lengths. There is a unique stationary solution when the length \(a\) is between these two critical values. This peculiar feature is different from the classical results due to the nonlocal singularity.