Existence and nonexistence of patterns on Riemannian manifolds (Q645367)

Let \((M, g)\) be a Riemannian manifold and \(D \subseteq M\) be a bounded domain in \(M\) with a well-defined, continuous outer normal \(\nu: \partial D \longrightarrow TM|_{\partial D}\), and consider the heat diffusion problem with source \(f\) on \(D\), namely the parabolic differential problem on \(u= u(x, t): \overline D \times (0, T) \longrightarrow \mathbb R \) \[ \left\{ \begin{matrix} \frac{\partial u}{\partial t} &=& \Delta_g u + f(u) \hfill & \text{in}\;D \times (0, T)\hfill\\ \frac{\partial u}{\partial \nu} &=& 0\hfill & \text{on}\;\partial D \times (0,T)\hfill\\ u &=& u_o \hfill & \text{on} \;D \times \{0\}\hfill\end{matrix}\right. \] A \textit{pattern} is a non constant, stationary solution \(U = U(x)\), which is stable, i.e., such that for any \(\varepsilon > 0\), there exists \(\delta > 0\) such that for any \(|u_o - U|_{\infty} < \delta\), the solutions \(u(x, t)\) satisfy \(|u(\cdot, t) - U|_\infty < \varepsilon\) for all positive \(t\)'s. A well-known criterion for stability or instability is given by the sign of the lowest value of \(\lambda\), for which there are non-trivial solutions to the linearized problem \[ \left\{ \begin{matrix} \Delta_g \varphi + f'(U)\varphi + \lambda \varphi = 0\hfill& \text{in}\;D \times (0, T)\\ \frac{\partial \varphi}{\partial \nu} = 0 \hfill& \text{on}\;\partial D\hfill\end{matrix}\right. \] In this paper, the authors prove that there are no patterns if the Ricci curvature of \(M\) is nonnegative and \(\partial D = \emptyset\) or the second fundamental form of \(\partial D\) is negative definite. They also find a criterion for existence of patterns on radially symmetric domains in surfaces of revolutions of \(\mathbb R^3\) and use it to construct new examples of domains admitting (or not admitting) patterns. In particular, they find examples without patterns also for the case of a manifold with negative Ricci curvature.