On solutions of evolution equations with proportional time delay (Q2761883)

The authors deal with reaction-diffusion equations NEWLINE\[NEWLINEy_t(x,t)=k\triangle y(x,t)+ay(x,\lambda t-\sigma)NEWLINE\]NEWLINE which incorporate a proportional or general linear time delay \(\lambda t-\sigma \) (\(\lambda ,\sigma \geq 0\), \(k>0\)), \(a\) is a possibly complex constant. The main result is that there exists a unique solution in the interval \([0,T]\) (\(T>0\)) if \(0<\lambda \leq 1\) and for \(0<T<\sigma /(\lambda -1)\) if \(\lambda ,\sigma >1\). In the case \(0<\lambda < 1\) there exists a constant \(\mu_0\) such that the solution does not grow faster than a polynomial of degree \(p=(\ln\lambda)^{-1}\ln (k\mu_0|a|^{-1})\) and, moreover, if \(|a|<k\mu_0\), then \(p<0\) and all solutions decay to zero at polynomial rate as \(t\to\infty \). Similar results are obtained for equations involving power time delay terms of the form \(ay(x,t^{\lambda })\).