Dynamics of time-periodic reaction-diffusion equations with compact initial support on \(\mathbb{R}\) (Q2334880)

The authors consider the Cauchy problem for the reaction-diffusion equation in the unknown \(u=u(x,t)\), \[ \left\{ \begin{array}{ll} u_t = u_{xx} + f(t,u), & x\in\mathbb{R},\ t>0, \\ u(x,0)=u_0(x), & x\in\mathbb{R}. \end{array} \right. \tag{1} \] The initial data \(u_0\in L^\infty(\mathbb{R})\) is assumed to be nonnegative and having compact support. For positive solutions \(u\), the nonlinear term is assumed to be periodic in \(t\), \(f(t+T,,u)=f(t,u)\), and satisfying \(f(\cdot,0)=0\) in addition to being Hölder continuous on \(\mathbb{R}\times[0,\infty)\) and \(\mathcal{C}^1\) in \(u\). These assumptions guarantee a local in time solution bounded in \(L^\infty(\mathbb{R}).\) This article presents some new results on the asymptotic behavior of the bounded solutions of (1). First, the authors show that \(\omega\)-limit solutions must be spatially constant or symmetrically decreasing and that the set of \(\omega\)-limit solutions either consists of a single time-periodic solution or of multiple time-periodic solutions and any heteroclinic connections between them. Under an additional assumption, the authors prove that the \(\omega\)-limit set is a singleton and hence, any \(\omega\)-limit solution converges to a time-periodic solution. The results are applied to (1) where \(f\) is a bistable nonlinearity or a combustion nonlinearity.