Blow-up for time-fractional diffusion equations with superlinear convex semilinear terms

Abstract: This article is concerned with a semilinear time-fractional diffusion equation with a superlinear convex semilinear term in a bounded domain $\Omega$ with the homogeneous Dirichlet, Neumann, Robin boundary conditions and non-negative and not identically vanishing initial value. The order of the fractional derivative in time is between $1$ and $0$, and the elliptic part is with time-independent coefficients. We prove (i) The solution with any initial value blow-up if the eigenvalue $\lambda_1$ of the elliptic operator with the minimum real part is non-positive. (ii) Otherwise, the solution blows up if a weighted $L^1$-norm of initial value is greater than some critical value give by $\lambda_1$. We provide upper estimates of the blow-up times. The key is a comparison principle for time-fractional ordinary differential equations.