Sturm attractors for quasilinear parabolic equations (Q1671237)

This work provides a detailed characterization of the attractor of one-dimensional quasilinear parabolic equations of the type: \[ u_t=a(x,u,u_x)u_{xx}+f(x,u,u_x), \] on a finite interval with Neumann boundary conditions, with \(a\) strictly positive. Under some growth conditions on the nonlinearities, ensuring that the flow generated by the equation is dissipative, the problem is to understand the structure of the attractor. The main theorem states that, assuming that the equilibria are hyperbolic, the attractor consists of these equilibria and heteroclinic connections among them, and determines which pairs of equilibria are connected by a heteroclinic. This determination is made in an explicit way in terms of the Morse index of the solutions and a notion of adjacent solutions. The results in this work extend previous work of \textit{B. Fiedler} and \textit{C. Rocha} [J. Differ. Equations 125, No. 1, 239--281 (1996; Zbl 0849.35056)], which dealt with semilinear equations.