Local bifurcation-branching analysis of global and ``blow-up'' patterns for a fourth-order thin film equation (Q649064)

The authors study global asymptotic behavior when \(t\rightarrow+\infty\) (global similarity patterns for \(t\gg1\)) and finite-time blow-up behavior when \(t\rightarrow T^{-}<+\infty\) (blow-up similarity patterns with finite time behavior) of solutions to the forth-order semilinear thin film equation (TFE-4) \[ u_{t}=-\nabla\cdot(|u|^{n}\nabla\Delta u)\quad \text{in } {\mathbb{R}}^{N}\times{\mathbb{R}_{+}},\quad n>0.\eqno (1) \] Both classes of solutions are presented in joint form \[ u_{\pm}(x,t)=(\pm t)^{-\alpha}f(y),\quad y=\frac{x}{(\pm t)^{\beta}}\text{ for } \pm t>0,\quad \beta=\frac{1-\alpha n}{4}, \] where the similarity profiles \(f(y)\) satisfy two nonlinear eigenvalue problems \[ {\mathbf{B}}_{n}^{\pm}(\alpha,\beta)\equiv-\nabla\cdot(|f|^{n}\nabla\Delta f)\pm\beta y\cdot\nabla f\pm\alpha f=0\quad \text{in } {\mathbb{R}}^{n}, \quad \alpha\in\mathbb{R},\eqno (2) \] and the sign ``\(+\)'' \((t>0)\) answers to global asymptotics (``\(-\)'' (\(t<0\), \(T=0\)) to blow-up limits, describing a ``micro-scale'' structure). The main approach used is ``homotopic deformation'' of (1) as \(n\rightarrow 0^{+}\) together with bifurcation analysis to get a countable set of nonlinear pairs \(\{f_{\gamma},\alpha_{\gamma}\}\). They occur after global and blow-up scaling of the bi-harmonic equation in connection with a pair of linear nonselfadjoint operators \[ {\mathbf{B}}=-\Delta^{2}+\frac{1}{4}y\cdot\nabla+\frac{N}{4}I,\quad {\mathbf{B}}^{\ast}=({\mathbf{B})}_{t}^{\ast}=-\Delta^{2}-\frac{1}{4}y\cdot\nabla \] having real discrete spectra. This leads to oscillatory sign-changing nonlinear patterns of the TFE, at least for small \(n>0\).