Multiple-spike ground state solutions of the Gierer-Meinhardt equations for biological activator-inhibitor systems (Q2504352)

This paper deals with the following one-dimensional stationnary Gierer-Meinhardt type system: \[ (P)\;\;u''-u+\dfrac{u^2}{v}=0,\;\;v''-\sigma^2v+u^2=0,\;\;x\in\mathbb R \] associated with the conditions \(u,v>0\) and \(u,v\to 0\) as \(|x|\to\infty\), where \(\sigma\ll 1.\) Let \(U(x)=6\text{ sech}^2(\dfrac{x}{2})\) be the even positive spike-function which tends to zero as \(|x|\to\infty\), solution of the ordinary differential equation \(u''-u+u^2=0.\) The authors are interested in an approximation of the number \(k(\sigma)\) of spikes of the solutions of \((P)\) one can expect to occur, as \(\sigma \to 0.\) For integer \(k\geq2,\;0<\beta<1,\) set \(W(x)=W_{k,\sigma, \beta}(x)= \sum_1^k U(x-\xi_j),\;x\in \mathbb R\) where \(\xi=(\xi_1,...,\xi_k)\in \mathbb R^k\) belongs to a subset \(\Lambda= \Lambda(k,\sigma,\beta)\) of \(\mathbb R^k\) of points whose coordinates satisfy the conditions \(\xi_j<\xi_{j+1} ,\sum\limits_{j=1}^k\xi_j=0\) and \((1-\beta) |\log \sigma|\leq|\xi_j-\xi_{j+1}|\leq|\log\sigma|,\) \(w=\int_{\mathbb R} W^2(x) \,dx\) and \(\tau=\dfrac{2\sigma} {\omega}.\) Let \((P_{\tau})\) be (P) where the second equation is replaced by \(v''-\sigma^2 v+\tau u^2=0.\) It is proved that, for \(\sigma\) small enough, there exist \(\xi\in \Lambda(k,\sigma,\beta)\) with \(k=\) const \(\sigma^{-{\beta}},\) where \(0<\beta<\frac12,\) can be arbitrarily close to \(\frac12,\) and a solution \((u,v)\) of \((P_{\tau})\) such that \(u\) has exactly \(k\) spikes and, as \(\sigma\to 0\), \(u(x)\) is the uniform limit in \(x\) of \(\sum\limits _1^k U(x-\xi_j),\) and \(v(\xi_j+x)\) tends to \(1\), on any compact set, \(j=1,...,k.\) Moreover \((\tau u,\tau v)\) is a solution of \((P)\). The proof is based on the Lyapunov-Schmidt method of finite dimensional reduction.