Movement of time-delayed hot spots in Euclidean space (Q522029)

There is a well-known relation, the so-called diffusion phenomenon, between solutions to the Cauchy problems for the classical damped wave equation and the heat equation. In a short way this phenomenon can be explained as follows: The difference of suitable solutions to both Cauchy problems decays faster (in a suitable norm) than each solution itself. For this reason there is a connection between the solutions to both Cauchy problems. This connection motivated the authors to study the shape of solutions to the Cauchy problem for the classical damped wave equation after taking account of known results for hot spots of solutions to the Cauchy problem for the heat equation. Let \(v=v(t,x)=P_n(t)\phi(x)\) be the uniquely determined classical solution to the Cauchy problem \[ v_t -\Delta v=0,\,\,\,v(0,x)=\phi(x),\,\,\,x \in \mathbb{R}^n,\,\,\,t>0, \] with bounded and smooth initial data \(\phi\). Then several authors were interested to describe the set of hot spots \[ H_\phi(t)=\big\{ x \in \mathbb{R}^n: P_n(t)\phi(x)=\max_{\xi \in \mathbb{R}^n} P_n(t)\phi(\xi)\big\}. \] In view of the diffusion phenomenon it could be expected, that spatial maximizers of the solution to \[ u_{tt} -\Delta u + u_t=0,\,\,\,u(0,x)=\phi(x),\,\,\,u_t(0,x)=\psi(x),\,\,\,x \in \mathbb{R}^n,\,\,\,t>0, \] have similar properties as hot spots. To treat this problem the authors introduce for compactly supported smooth data \((\phi,\psi)\), where \(h:=\phi+\psi\) is non-zero and non-negative, the set of time-delayed hot spots \[ H(t)=\big\{ x \in \mathbb{R}^n: u(t,x)=\max_{\xi \in \mathbb{R}^n} u(t,\xi)\big\}. \] The authors prove the following results: {\parindent=0.7cm\begin{itemize}\item[--] For large enough \(t\) the set \(H(t)\) is contained in the convex hull of the support of \(h\). One cannot expect this result for small \(t\). \item[--] The set \(H(t)\) converges to the one-point set of the centroid of \(h\) as \(t\) goes to infinity. \item[--] For large enough \(t\) the set \(H(t)\) consists of one point. \end{itemize}} The main tool is a known decomposed form of the solution \(u\) into a heat part and a wave part.