Attractors of viscous balance laws: Uniform estimates for the dimension (Q1382704)

The author investigates singularly perturbed parabolic equations of the form: \[ u_t+f(u)_x= \varepsilon u_{xx} +g(u),\;x\in [0,1],\;u_x(0,t) =u_x(1,t)=0. \tag{1} \] Here \(\varepsilon >0\) is small, the functions \(f,g\) are in \(C^3\) and finally subject to three conditions: \(u\cdot g(u)<0\) if \(| u|>R\) for some sufficiently large \(R>0\) (dissipativity), if \(f'(u)=0\) then \(f''(u)\neq 0\), if \(g(u)=0\) then \(f'(u)\neq 0\). In a detailed introduction the author describes what is known about (1) and which kind of problems may be associated with a passage to the limit \(\varepsilon\to 0\). In particular it is known that equation (1) has a global attractor \(A_\varepsilon\) of finite dimension \(\dim(A_\varepsilon)\), whose dimension can be analysed and described in terms of the instable manifolds of the equilibria of (1). The author now asks questions about the behaviour of \(\dim(A_\varepsilon)\) as \(\varepsilon\to 0\). His main result states that there is \(C\) such that \(\dim(A_\varepsilon)<C\) as \(\varepsilon\to 0\). The proof is based on a detailed phase plane analysis of the boundary value problem: \[ \varepsilon u_{xx}- \bigl(f(u)\bigr)_x +g(u)=0, \quad u_x(0) =u_x(1)=0. \] The proof splits into several lemmas, each of interest in itself. The paper concludes with a discussion of the results obtained, on further results which can be proved and on open problems.