Lipschitz stability for the growth rate coefficients in a nonlinear Fisher-KPP equation (Q1995439)

Consider \[ \left\{ \begin{array}{ll} u_t-D\Delta u = u(\mu(x)-\gamma(x)u),\qquad & (t,x)\in (0,+\infty)\times \Omega, \\ u(t,x)=0, & (t,x)\in (0,+\infty)\times \partial \Omega, \\ u(0,x)=u_i(x), & x\in \Omega, \end {array} \right. \] where \(\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^d\) (\(d\ge 1\)) is a bounded domain and its boundary \(\partial \Omega\) is smooth. The system can model biological invasion. Here \(u\) is the density of the invasive species, \(D>0\) is the diffusion coefficient, \(\mu:\Omega\to\mathbb{R}\) represents the intrinsic growth, and \(\gamma\ge 0\) measures the effects of competition between individuals. It is known that \(\mu\) and \(\gamma\) are essential to predict the evolution of the population. When an invasive species has been introduced into a new environment, these parameters are unknown. The authors are interested in determining \(\mu\) and \(\gamma\) using only partial measurement of the population density. With a combination of maximum principles, consequences of the regularizing effect of the heat equation, and Carleman estimates, established is a Lipschitz stability result that ensures that the coefficient \(\mu\) (respectively \(\gamma\)) is identifiable from the chosen set of observation and that close observations of the solutions lead to close estimates of the coefficient (see Theorem 2.1 and Theorem 2.2 for detail). These results complement some existing ones. Moreover, several open questions related to the obtained results are proposed.