Non-autonomous scalar linear-dissipative and purely dissipative parabolic PDEs over a compact base flow (Q2662499)

The authors deal with the asymptotic dynamics of a family of time-dependent scalar parabolic PDEs over a continuous flow on a compact and connected metric space \((P,\sigma,\mathbb{R})\), with either Neumann, Robin or Dirichlet boundary conditions. Provided that the correct regularity assumptions are imposed, the flow generates a cocycle on the base space \(X\) and an associated skew-product semiflow \(\tau\) in \(P\times X\). Moreover, this cocycle has a cocycle (or pullback) attractor \(\{A(p)\}_{p\in P}\) in \(X\), and the skew-product semiflow \(\tau\) has a global attractor \(\mathbb{A}\) in \(P\times X\), with \(A(p)=\{z\in X\mid (p,z)\in \mathbb{A}\}\) for each \(p\in P\). By assuming a symmetry condition on the nonlinearity, one obtains \(b(p) = \sup_{p\in P}A(p) = -\inf_{p\in P}A(p)\), and \(A(p)\subset [-b(p),b(p)]\) for each \(p\in P\). The goal of the paper is to describe \(b\) using the internal dynamics of \(P\). The authors treat two cases separately: the linear dissipative case, in which there exists \(r_0>0\) such that the nonlinear dissipative term acts only outside the \(r_0\)-neighborhood of \(0\) (and, hence, the dissipativity around \(0\) is determined only by the linear term); and the purely dissipative case, in which the nonlinear dissipative term acts in every neighborhood of \(0\). The main tool is the principal spectrum, which is the continuous spectrum of the one-dimensional linear cocycle obtained by restricting the linear skew-product semiflow (that is, the skew-product semiflow generated by the linear problems) to the principal bundle of a certain decomposition of the base space. Such a one-dimensional cocycle is crucial in the description of topological and ergodic properties of \(\tau\) on \(\mathbb{A}\). Lastly, three interesting examples are described.