Time periodic solutions for a sixth order nonlinear parabolic equation (Q2811003)

The existence of time-periodic solutions for a sixth order nonlinear Cahn-Hilliard type problem in one space dimension is studied. The equation under consideration is as follows: NEWLINE\[NEWLINE \frac {\partial u}{\partial t}=\gamma D^6u-D^2\bigl (a(u)\bigr)D^2u + \frac {a^{\prime}(u)}{2}{\mid} Du{\mid}^2 -f(u) + h(x,t) NEWLINE\]NEWLINE in \(Q_T=(0,1) \times (0,T)\), where \(\gamma >0\), \(a(u)=3A(t)u^2 -B(t)\) with \(A(t), B(t)\) Hölder continuous functions on \(\mathbb {R}\) with period \(T\), bounded together with first time derivatives, \(h \in C^{2+\alpha ,\frac {\alpha}{6}}(\overline {Q_{T}})\) for some \(\alpha \in (0,1)\) with \(h(x,0)=h(x,T)\).NEWLINENEWLINEThis equation is satisfied with homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions \(u=D^{2}u=D^{4}u=0\) for \(x=0,1\), \(t\in (0,T)\), and time-periodic initial datum \(u(x,0)=u(x,T)\), \(x\in (0,1)\).NEWLINENEWLINEThe problem describes phase transitions in ternary oil-water-surfactant mixtures in one-dimen\-sional geometry.NEWLINENEWLINEThe previous literature on sixth order Cahn-Hilliard type equations with nonlinear and singular diffusion has been concerned in particular with the existence and uniqueness of global in time solutions in three space dimensions.NEWLINENEWLINEThe main result proved in the present paper asserts that the problem under consideration admits a time-periodic solution \(u\) in the space \(C^{6+\alpha ,1+\frac {\alpha}{6}}(\overline {Q_{T}})\). The proof is restricted to the existence of weak solutions in the space \(C^{2+\alpha ,\frac {\alpha}{6}}(\overline {Q_{T}})\), since then the regularity follows by a standard method. To prove the existence of such solutions the Lerey-Schauder fixed point theorem is applied. The proof involves combination of the energy techniques with some method based on the framework of Campanato spaces.