A diffusive logistic equation with a free boundary and sign-changing coefficient in time-periodic environment (Q897688)

The article is concerned with the regularity and the spreading-vanishing dichotomy of a logistic equation \(u_t-du_{xx}=a(t,x)u-b(t,x)u^2\) defined for \(t>0,x\in (0,h(t))\). Here, \(h(t)\) is a free boundary function satisfying \(u(t,h(t))=0\) and \(h^{\prime}(t)=-\mu u_x(t,h(t))\) for \(t\geq 0\). The same problem for the cases \(0<\kappa_1\leq a(t,x)\), \(b(t,x)\leq \kappa_2\) and \(b=1,a=a(x)\) was studied in the past. The main purpose of this article is to show that most previous results continue to be true with \(a(t,x)\) \(T\)-periodic and maybe ``very negative'' in the sense that both \(|\{a(t,x)>0\}|\ll |\{a(t,x)<0\}|\) and \(\int_0^{\infty}a(t,x)dx=-\infty\) hold for \(t>0\). The attempt to consider the sign-changing intrinsic growth function \(a\) with \(T\)-periodic and free boundary seems new and significant.