Transversality of stable and Nehari manifolds for a semilinear heat equation (Q645004)

Let \(\Omega\) be a smooth bounded domain in \({\mathbb R}^n\) and \(p>1\); \(p<(n+2)/(n-2)\) if \(n>2\). Consider the semilinear heat equation \(u_t-\Delta u=|u|^{p-1}u\) for \(x\in\Omega\), \(t>0\), complemented by the boundary conditions \(u=0\) for \(x\in\partial\Omega\), \(t>0\), and the initial condition \(u(x,0)=u_0(x)\) for \(x\in\Omega\), where \(u_0\in H^1_0(\Omega)\). Let \[ \begin{aligned} E(\phi)&=\int_\Omega\Bigl({1\over2}|\nabla\phi|^2-{1\over p+1}|\phi|^{p+1}\Bigr)\,dx \\ \text{and} I(\phi)&=\int_\Omega\bigl(|\nabla\phi|^2-|\phi|^{p+1}\bigr)\,dx \end{aligned} \] be the corresponding energy and Nehari functional, respectively. It is known that the solution \(u\) blows up in finite time if \(E(u_0)<0\). The authors show that the condition \(E(u_0)<0\) cannot be replaced with \(I(u_0)<0\), thus answering negatively a question left open by \textit{F.~Gazzola} and \textit{T.~Weth} [Differ. Integral Equ. 18, No. 9, 961--990 (2005; Zbl 1212.35248)]. More precisely, they show that given a steady state \(\phi\), there exists \(u_0\) such that \(I(u_0)<0\) and the corresponding solution \(u\) exists globally and converges to \(\phi\). The proof proceeds by showing that the local stable manifold of any non-zero steady state solution intersects the Nehari manifold transversally.