Generation, propagation, and annihilation of metastable patterns (Q703821)

The author studies the full-time dynamics of the initial value problem, for \(u^{\varepsilon}(x,t)\), \(u^{\varepsilon}_{t}=\varepsilon^{2}u^{\varepsilon}_{xx}- F'(u^{\varepsilon})\), \(x\in \mathbb R\), \(t>0\), \(u^{\varepsilon}(x,0)=u_{0}\), \(x\in \mathbb R,\) where \(0<\varepsilon\ll 1\), and \(F(u)\) has global minimum zero at \(u=\pm 1\). It is assumed that \(u_{0}\) is bounded, continuous and independent of \(\varepsilon\), changes sign finitely many times, and \(\liminf_{| x| \rightarrow\infty}| u_{0}(x)| >0\).