Efficient approximation of the solution of certain nonlinear reaction-diffusion equations with large absorption (Q1758415)

The author studies the positive stationary solutions of a standard finite-difference discretization of the semilinear heat equation with nonlinear Neumann boundary conditions. The result shows that if the absorption is large enough as compared with the flux in the boundary, there exists a unique solution of such a discretization, which approximates the unique positive stationary solution of the ``continuous'' equation. The author also exhibits an algorithm computing an \(\varepsilon \)-approximation of such a solution by means of a homotopy continuation method. The cost of the algorithm is linear in the number of nodes involved in the discretization and the logarithm of the number of digits of approximation required.