Periodic stability of solutions to some degenerate parabolic equations with dynamic boundary conditions (Q1915548)

This article is concerned with a degenerate parabolic equation \[ {\partial u\over \partial t}- \Delta\beta(u)= f\quad\text{in } Q:= (t_0, \infty)\times \Omega \] with dynamic boundary condition \[ {\partial \beta(u)\over \partial\nu}+ {\partial V\over \partial t}+ h= 0,\;V= \beta(u)\quad\text{on } \Sigma:= (t_0, \infty)\times \Gamma, \] where \(t_0\in \mathbb{R}\) or \(t_0= -\infty\); \(\Omega\) is a bounded domain in \(\mathbb{R}^N\) \((N\geq 1)\) with smooth boundary \(\Gamma\); \((\partial/\partial\nu)\) denotes the outward normal derivative on \(\Gamma\); \(\beta: \mathbb{R}\to \mathbb{R}\) is a given nondecreasing function; \(f\) and \(h\) are given functions on \(Q\) and \(\Sigma\), respectively. The above system represents the enthalpy formulation of multidimensional Stefan problems with dynamic boundary conditions, in case the function \(\beta\) is non-decreasing and equals to zero on the certain interval. The purpose of this article is to show the following facts: Under the periodic conditions for data, (1) (existence of periodic solutions) the problem has at least one periodic solution; (2) (order property of periodic solutions) if \(u_1\), \(u_2\) are periodic solutions of the problem such that \[ \int_\Omega u_1(0, x) dx+ \int_\Gamma \beta(u_1(0, x)) d\Gamma\geq \int_\Omega u_2(0, x) dx+ \int_\Gamma \beta(u_2(0, x)) d\Gamma, \] then \(\beta(u_1)\geq \beta(u_2)\) on \(\mathbb{R}\times \Omega\); (3) (asymptotic stability of periodic solutions) if \(u\) is a solution on \([t_0, \infty)\) \((- \infty< t_0< \infty)\) then there is a periodic solution \(w\) such that \(\beta(u(nT+\cdot))\to \beta(w)\) in \(L^2(0, T; H^1(\Omega))\), where \(T> 0\) is a period of the data. The results on periodic solutions are obtained from the theory of nonlinear evolution equations involving time-dependent subdifferential operators in Hilbert spaces introduced by Kenmochi and Ôtani.