Electronic Research Archive

2021, Issue 5: 2829-2839. doi: 10.3934/era.2021016

A Liouville theorem for ancient solutions to a semilinear heat equation and its elliptic counterpart

• Received: 01 August 2020 Revised: 01 December 2020 Published: 15 March 2021
• Primary: 35B08, 35B53; Secondary: 35B40

• We establish the nonexistence of nontrivial ancient solutions to the nonlinear heat equation $u_t = \Delta u+|u|^{p-1}u$ which are smaller in absolute value than the self-similar radial singular steady state, provided that the exponent $p$ is strictly between Serrin's exponent and that of Joseph and Lundgren. This result was previously established by Fila and Yanagida [Tohoku Math. J. (2011)] by using forward self-similar solutions as barriers. In contrast, we apply a sweeping argument with a family of time independent weak supersolutions. Our approach naturally lends itself to yield an analogous Liouville type result for the steady state problem in higher dimensions. In fact, in the case of the critical Sobolev exponent we show the validity of our results for solutions that are smaller in absolute value than a 'Delaunay'-type singular solution.

Citation: Christos Sourdis. A Liouville theorem for ancient solutions to a semilinear heat equation and its elliptic counterpart[J]. Electronic Research Archive, 2021, 29(5): 2829-2839. doi: 10.3934/era.2021016

Related Papers:

• We establish the nonexistence of nontrivial ancient solutions to the nonlinear heat equation $u_t = \Delta u+|u|^{p-1}u$ which are smaller in absolute value than the self-similar radial singular steady state, provided that the exponent $p$ is strictly between Serrin's exponent and that of Joseph and Lundgren. This result was previously established by Fila and Yanagida [Tohoku Math. J. (2011)] by using forward self-similar solutions as barriers. In contrast, we apply a sweeping argument with a family of time independent weak supersolutions. Our approach naturally lends itself to yield an analogous Liouville type result for the steady state problem in higher dimensions. In fact, in the case of the critical Sobolev exponent we show the validity of our results for solutions that are smaller in absolute value than a 'Delaunay'-type singular solution.

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