Klemens Fellner

STABLE STATIONARY STATES OF NON-LOCAL INTERACTION EQUATIONS

In this paper, we are interested in the large-time behaviour of a solution to a non-local interaction equation, where a density of particles/individuals evolves subject to an interaction potential and an external potential. It is known that for regular interaction potentials, stable stationary states of these equations are generically finite sums of Dirac masses. For a finite sum of Dirac masses, we give (i) a condition to be a stationary state, (ii) two necessary conditions of linear stability w.r.t. shifts and reallocations of individual Dirac masses, and (iii) show that these linear stability conditions imply local non-linear stability. Finally, we show that for regular repulsive interaction potential We converging to a singular repulsive interaction potential W, the Dirac-type stationary states approximate weakly a unique stationary state . We illustrate our results with numerical examples.

Global Existence for Quadratic Systems of Reaction-Diffusion

Abstract We prove global existence in time of weak solutions to a class of quadratic reaction-diffusion systems for which a Lyapounov structure of L log L-entropy type holds. The approach relies on an a priori dimension-independent L2-estimate, valid for a wider class of systems including also some classical Lotka-Volterra systems, and which provides an L1-bound on the nonlinearities, at least for not too degenerate diffusions. In the more degenerate case, some global existence may be stated with the use of a weaker notion of renormalized solution with defect measure, arising in the theory of kinetic equations.

Stability of stationary states of non-local equations with singular interaction potentials

We study the large-time behaviour of a non-local evolution equation for the density of particles or individuals subject to an external and an interaction potential. In particular, we consider interaction potentials which are singular in the sense that their first derivative is discontinuous at the origin. For locally attractive singular interaction potentials we prove under a linear stability condition local non-linear stability of stationary states consisting of a finite sum of Dirac masses. For singular repulsive interaction potentials we show the stability of stationary states of uniformly bounded solutions under a convexity condition. Finally, we present numerical simulations to illustrate our results.

Improved Duality Estimates and Applications to Reaction-Diffusion Equations

We present a refined duality estimate for parabolic equations. This estimate entails new results for systems of reaction-diffusion equations, including smoothness and exponential convergence towards equilibrium for equations with quadratic right-hand sides in two dimensions. For general systems in any space dimension, we obtain smooth solutions of reaction-diffusion systems coming out of reversible chemistry under an assumption that the diffusion coefficients are sufficiently close one to another.

Burgers--Poisson: A Nonlinear Dispersive Model Equation

A dispersive model equation is considered, which has been proposed by Whitham [Linear and Nonlinear Waves, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1974] as a shallow water model, and which can also be seen as a caricature of two-species Euler--Poisson problems. A number of formal properties as well as similarities to other dispersive equations are derived. A travelling wave analysis and some numerical tests are carried out. The equation features wave breaking in finite time. A local existence result for smooth solutions and a global existence result for weak entropy solutions are proved. Finally, a small dispersion limit is carried out for situations where the solution of the limiting equation is smooth.

Trend to Equilibrium for Reaction-Diffusion Systems Arising from Complex Balanced Chemical Reaction Networks

The quantitative convergence to equilibrium for reaction-diffusion systems arising from complex balanced chemical reaction networks with mass action kinetics is studied by using the so-called entropy method. In the first part of the paper, by deriving explicitly the entropy dissipation, we show that for complex balanced systems without boundary equilibria, each trajectory converges exponentially fast to the unique complex balance equilibrium. Moreover, a constructive proof is proposed to explicitly estimate the rate of convergence in the special case of a cyclic reaction. In the second part of the paper, complex balanced systems with boundary equilibria are considered. We investigate two specific cases featuring two and three chemical substances respectively. In these cases, the boundary equilibria are shown to be unstable in some sense, so that exponential convergence to the unique strictly positive equilibrium can also be proven.

The entropy dissipation method for spatially inhomogeneous reaction-diffusion-type systems

We study the long-time asymptotics of reaction–diffusion-type systems that feature a monotone decaying entropy (Lyapunov, free energy) functional. We consider both bounded domains and confining potentials on the whole space for arbitrary space dimensions. Our aim is to derive quantitative expressions for (or estimates of) the rates of convergence towards an (entropy minimizing) equilibrium state in terms of the constants of diffusion and reaction and with respect to conserved quantities. Our method, the so-called entropy approach, seeks to quantify convergence to equilibrium by using functional inequalities, which relate quantitatively the entropy and its dissipation in time. The entropy approach is well suited to nonlinear problems and known to be quite robust with respect to model variations. It has already been widely applied to scalar diffusion–convection equations, and the main goal of this paper is to study its generalization to systems of partial differential equations that contain diffusion and reaction terms and admit fewer conservation laws than the size of the system. In particular, we successfully apply the entropy approach to general linear systems and to a nonlinear example of a reaction–diffusion–convection system arising in solid-state physics as a paradigm for general nonlinear systems.

A DRIFT–DIFFUSION–REACTION MODEL FOR EXCITONIC PHOTOVOLTAIC BILAYERS: ASYMPTOTIC ANALYSIS AND A 2D HDG FINITE ELEMENT SCHEME

We present and discuss a mathematical model for the operation of bilayer organic photovoltaic devices. Our model couples drift-diffusion-recombination equations for the charge carriers (specifically, electrons and holes) with a reaction-diffusion equation for the excitons/ polaron pairs and Poissons equation for the self-consistent electrostatic potential. The material difference (i.e. the HOMO/LUMO gap) of the two organic substrates forming the bilayer device are included as a work-function potential. Firstly, we perform an asymptotic analysis of the scaled one-dimensional stationary state system i) with focus on the dynamics on the interface and ii) with the goal of simplifying the bulk dynamics away for the interface. Secondly, we present a twodimensional Hybrid Discontinuous Galerkin Finite Element numerical scheme which is very well suited to resolve i) the material changes ii) the resulting strong variation over the interface and iii) the necessary upwinding in the discretization of drift-diffusion equations. Finally, we compare the numerical results with the approximating asymptotics.

Exponential Convergence to Equilibrium for Nonlinear Reaction-Diffusion Systems Arising in Reversible Chemistry

We consider a prototypical nonlinear reaction-diffusion system arising in reversible chemistry. Based on recent existence results of global weak and classical solutions derived from entropy-decay related a-priori estimates and duality methods, we prove exponential convergence of these solutions towards equilibrium with explicit rates in all space dimensions.

Exponential decay towards equilibrium and global classical solutions for nonlinear reaction–diffusion systems

We consider a system of reaction–diffusion equations describing the reversible reaction of two species