Mathematical justification of a nonlinear integro-differential equation for the propagation of spherical flames (Q5920648)

The authors study a singular perturbation problem associated with the thermodiffusive model for spherically symmetric premixed flames with one-step kinetics. Their goal is a rigorous justification of an asymptotic equation for the radius of the flame ball given by Joulin in 1985 which involves a fractional derivative of order 1/2. In particular, the evolution happens on a slow time scale \(\varepsilon^2\) along a manifold of stationary solutions. In a very careful study it is shown that for a Lewis number Le=\(1-\delta\) and for initial data that is close enough to a steady solution Joulin\(^{\prime}\)s result can be made rigorous. In the course of the proof the steady state problem is studied and existence and uniqueness of solutions (Zeldovich solutions) are proved. It is then shown that for Lewis number smaller than~\(1\) the linearization around a Zeldovich solution possesses only one unstable eigenvalue of order~\(\varepsilon^2\) which explains the slow time scale \(\varepsilon^{-2}\). On the other hand, for Lewis number greater than~\(1\), there exist unstable eigenvalues of large modulus so that no quasi-steady evolution can be expected. In a next step an approximate solution is constructed which coincides for any time with some stationary solution inside a large ball. Using pointwise estimates for the Green\(^{\prime}\)s function in the spirit of Zumbrun and Howard, the evolution can be described sufficiently precise to prove the main theorem. The article is a very delicate study involving different aspects of singular perturbation theory with a strong result. All steps are outlined before the quite tedious calculations are carried out. The methodology seems to be general enough to be carried over to a other classes of problems.