Temperature on rods with Robin boundary conditions (Q6177089)

This paper contains, as a particular case, a solution to an interesting question raised in [\textit{J. J. Langford} and \textit{P. McDonald}, Ann. Fenn. Math. 47, No. 2, 759--775 (2022; Zbl 1502.34036)]: where it should be placed the heat sources in a rod located along the interval \([-\pi,\pi]\) to maximize the temperature gap. More precisely, it is assumed that in half of the locations of the rod, say the set \(E\), the heat is generated uniformly and in the remaining half the heat is neither generated nor absorbed and at the ends of the rod Newton's law of cooling rules the flux of the heat. So the problem is to determine the set \(E\) for which \[ \mathrm{osc} (u):=\displaystyle \max_{[-\pi,\pi]} u-\displaystyle\min_{[-\pi,\pi]} u \] is maximum, where \(u\) stands for the steady-state temperature that satisfies the Poisson equation \[ -u''(x)=\chi_E(x) \text{ for } x\in [-\pi,\pi], \] with Robin boundary conditions \[ -u'(-\pi)+\alpha \, u(-\pi)=u'(\pi)+\alpha \, u(\pi)=0, \] \(\alpha>0\) and \(\chi_E\) is the characteristic function of \(E\). In addition, some other related issues are addressed and several open problems in higher dimensions are proposed.