Asymptotic behavior of solutions of a reaction diffusion equation with free boundary conditions

Abstract: We study a nonlinear diffusion equation of the form $u_t=u_{xx}+f(u)\ (x\in [g(t),h(t)])$ with free boundary conditions $g'(t)=-u_x(t,g(t))+\alpha$ and $h'(t)=-u_x(t,g(t))-\alpha$ for some $\alpha>0$. Such problems may be used to describe the spreading of a biological or chemical species, with the free boundaries representing the expanding fronts. When $\alpha=0$, the problem was recently investigated by \cite{DuLin, DuLou}. In this paper we consider the case $\alpha>0$. In this case shrinking (i.e. $h(t)-g(t)\to 0$) may happen, which is quite different from the case $\alpha=0$. Moreover, we show that, under certain conditions on $f$, shrinking is equivalent to vanishing (i.e. $u\to 0$), both of them happen as $t$ tends to some finite time. On the other hand, every bounded and positive time-global solution converges to a nonzero stationary solution as $t\to \infty$. As applications, we consider monostable and bistable types of nonlinearities, and obtain a complete description on the asymptotic behavior of the solutions.