Convergence to steady states of solutions of non-autonomous heat equations in \(\mathbb R^N\) (Q2465118)

In this paper, the authors consider the following non-autonomous heat equation: \[ u_{t}-\Delta u+f(u)=g(t,x)\text{ for }(t,x)\in{\mathbb R}_{+}\times \mathbb{R}^{N},\quad u(0,x)=u_{0}(x)\text{ for }x\in\mathbb{R}^{N}\tag{1} \] with \(N\geq3\) and \(f(u)=u-|u|^{p-1}u\) \((u\in\mathbb{R)}\) for some \(1<p<\frac{N+2}{N-2},g\in L^{2}(\mathbb{R}_{+};L^{2}\cap L^{q})\) for some \(q>N\) (where \(L^{p}:=L^{p}(\mathbb{R}^{N}),\) supp \(g(t,.)\subset K\) for all \(t\geq0\) and some \(K\subset\mathbb{R}^{N}\) compact, \(g(t,x)\geq0\) for all \((t,x)\in\mathbb{R}_{+}\times\mathbb{R}^{N},\) and \(u_{0}\in H^{1}(\mathbb{R}^{N})\cap L^{\infty}(\mathbb{R}^{N})\) has compact support. The main result of the paper states that if \(u\in C(\mathbb{R}_{+};H^{1})\) is a positive solution of \((1)\) such that \(\sup_{t\in\mathbb{R}_{+}}\|u(t)\|_{H^{1}}<+\infty,\) and if there exists \(\delta>0\) such that \(\sup_{t\in\mathbb{R}_{+}}t^{1+\delta}\int_{t}^{\infty} \|g(s)\|_{L^{2}(\mathbb{R}^{N})}^{2}ds<+\infty,\) then \(\lim_{t\rightarrow\infty}u(t):=w\) exists in \(H^{1},\) and \(-\Delta w+f(w)=0.\) This result extends previous results by \textit{C. Cortazar, M. del Pino} and \textit{M. Elguetta} [Commun. Partial Differ. Equations 24, No. 11--12, 2147--2172 (1999; Zbl 0940.35107)] and by \textit{E. Feireisl} and \textit{H. Petzeltová} [Differ. Integral Equ. 10, No.~1, 181--196 (1997; Zbl 0879.35023)] who considered the autonomous case \(g=0,\) as well as \textit{J. Busca, M. A. Jendoubi} and \textit{P. Poláčik} [Commun. Partial Differ. Equations 27, No.~9--10, 1793--1814 (2002; Zbl 1021.35013)] who considered a larger class of nonlinearities \(f.\)