Threshold and generic type I behaviors for a supercritical nonlinear heat equation (Q544020)

The authors consider the radially symmetric solutions of the nonlinear heat equation \(u_t=\Delta u+|u|^{p-1}u\) either on \(\mathbb R^n\) or on a finite ball under the Dirichlet boundary conditions. When \(N\geq3\), \(p>(N+2)/(N-2)\), the authors analyze the threshold for the solutions with initial data \(u_0=\lambda v\), where \(v\in C\cap H^1\) and \(v\geq0\), \(v\not\equiv0\). In fact, there exist a threshold \(\lambda^*>0\). If \(0<\lambda<\lambda^*\), the solution converges to \(0\) as \(t\rightarrow\infty\); while if \(\lambda\geq \lambda^*\), the solution blows up in finite time. The authors also show that there exist at most finitely many exceptional values \(\lambda_1=\lambda^*<\lambda_2<\cdots<\lambda_k\) such that, for all \(\lambda>\lambda^*\) with \(\lambda\not=\lambda_j\) \((j=1,2,\dots,k)\), the blow-up is complete and of type I with a flat local profile. Here, the blow-up is of type I, if \((T-t)^{\frac{1}{p-1}}\|u(\cdot,t)\|_{L^\infty}\) remains bounded as \(t\rightarrow T\). The main tools are the zero-number principle and energy estimates. In the second part, the authors employ the very same idea to show that the constant solution attains the smallest rescaled energy among all non-zero stationary solutions of the rescaled equation, and then derive a sharp criterion for no blow-up.