The finite dimensional attractor for a 4th order system of Cahn-Hilliard type with a supercritical nonlinearity. (Q1405968)

In this paper the authors consider systems of generalised viscous Cahn-Hilliard equations, \[ b u_t = - \Delta (a \Delta u - \alpha u_t - f(u) + \widetilde g), \quad x \in \Omega, \] where \(u\) is a \(k\)-vector, \(a\) and \(b\) are suitable matrices, \(\Omega\) is a domain in \(\mathbb R^n\). For most of the paper, Dirichlet boundary conditions are assumed. The main purpose of the paper is to prove the existence, and to characterise the properties of the attractor for this initial-boundary value problem in the space \[ \mathbb D = \{ v \in H^2(\Omega): v| _{\partial \Omega}=0, \;f (v) \in L^2(\Omega)\}, \] without making the usual growth assumptions on the non-linearity \(f(u)\). In section 2 the existence of a compact attractor in \(L^2\) is proved, using detailed results on the semigroup obtained in section 1 and the methods of Babin and Vishik, under mild assumptions on \(f\) and the function \(\widetilde g\). In section 3, under more assumptions on the structure of nonlinearity \(f(u)\), theorems on regularity of solutions are proved. In section 4, the authors consider a number of cases, which include physically interesting ones, when one can prove that the attractor has finite fractal dimension. Finally, in section 5, similar statements are proved for the case of Neumann boundary conditions.