Infinite-dimensional hyperbolic sets and spatio-temporal chaos in reaction diffusion systems in \(\mathbb{R}^n\) (Q2641361)

This long paper presents a rigorous construction of a parabolic PDE system which displays space-time chaotic behavior in its global attractor. The construction starts from a spatially and temporally periodic array \[ u_t=\gamma\Delta u-f_\lambda(t,x,u) \qquad (\ast) \] of identical copies of a temporally chaotic reaction-diffusion system \[ u_t=\gamma\Delta u-f(t,u) \qquad (\ast\ast) \] on a bounded domain \(\Omega_0\subset(0,1)^2\) with Dirichlet boundary conditions and \(f\) being \(1\)-periodic in \(t\). Here, the nonlinearity \(f_\lambda\) coincides with \(f\) on \(\Omega_0\), \(f_\lambda(t,x,u)=\lambda u\) for \(x\in[0,1]^n\setminus\Omega_0\) and \(f_\lambda\) is \(1\)-periodically extended to \({\mathbb R}^n\). Under regularity and dissipativity conditions guaranteeing the existence of a global attractor \({\mathcal A}_0\) for \((\ast\ast)\), and the assumption that \((\ast\ast)\) possesses a hyperbolic set \(\Gamma_0\) homeomorphic to the Bernoulli scheme \(\{0,1\}^{\mathbb Z}\), the main result reads as follows: For each sufficiently large \(\lambda\gg 1\) there exists a homeomorphic embedding \(\kappa\) of the \((n+1)\)-dimensional Bernoulli scheme \({\mathcal M}^{n+1}:=\{0,1\}^{{\mathbb Z}^{n+1}}\) to the attractor \({\mathcal A}\) of \((\ast)\) such that the conjugacy holds \[ S_{l_0,l}\circ\kappa=\kappa\circ T_{l_0,l} \] for all \(l_0\in{\mathbb N}\), \(l\in{\mathbb N}^n\), where \(T_{l_0,l}\) is the \((n+1)\)-parametric group of Bernoulli shifts on \({\mathcal M}^{n+1}\) and \(S_{l_0,l}\) an appropriate spatio-temporal dynamical system acting on the attractor \({\mathcal A}\) (see the paper for details). In particular, the topological entropy of that system is strictly positive. The persistence of the embedded Bernoulli scheme is established using hyperbolicity arguments and delicate PDE estimates. Moreover, an autonomous reaction-diffusion equation with polynomial nonlinearity is constructed, whose attractor possesses a homeomorphic embedding \(\bar\kappa\) of the Bernoulli scheme \({\mathcal M}^{n+1}\) satisfying the above conjugacy relation, where, in contrast to the above situation, the hyperbolicity of the image \(\bar\kappa({\mathcal M}^{n+1})\) is lost. Two appendices close the paper: One on the construction of reaction-diffusion systems with a hyperbolic set homeomorphic to \(\{0,1\}^{\mathbb Z}\), and one concerning the main results on Kolmogorov and topological entropy of attractors.