Global asymptotic stability of bifurcating, positive equilibria of p-Laplacian boundary value problems with p-concave nonlinearities
We consider the parabolic, initial value problem $$ v_t =Δ_p(v)+λg(x,v)ϕ_p(v), \quad \text{in $Ω\times (0,\infty),$} $$ \[ v =0, \text{in $\partialΩ\times (0,\infty),$}\tag{IVP} v =v_0\ge0, \text{in $Ω\times \{0\},$} \] where $Ω$ is a bounded domain in ${\mathbb R}^N$, for some integer $N\ge1$, with smooth boundary $\partialΩ$, $ϕ_p(s):=|s|^{p-1} {\rm sgn}s$, $s\in{\mathbb R}$, $Δ_p$ denotes the $p$-Laplacian, with $p>\max\{2,N\}$, $v_0\in C^0(\overlineΩ)$, and $λ>0$. The function $g:\overline{Ω} \times [0,\infty)\to(0,\infty)$ is $C^0$ and, for each $x\in\overline{Ω}$, the function $g(x,\cdot):[0,\infty)\to(0,\infty)$ is Lipschitz continuous and strictly decreasing. Clearly, (IVP) has the trivial solution $v\equiv0$, for all $λ>0$. In addition, there exists $0<λ_{\rm min}(g)<λ_{\rm max}(g)$ ($λ_{\rm max}(g)$ may be $\infty$) such that: $(a)$ if $λ\not\in(λ_{\rm min}(g),λ_{\rm max}(g))$ then (IVP) has no non-trivial, positive equilibrium; $(b)$ if $λ\in(λ_{\rm min}(g),λ_{\rm max}(g))$ then (IVP) has a unique, non-trivial, positive equilibrium $e_λ\in W_0^{1,p}(Ω)$. We prove the following results on the positive solutions of (IVP): $(a)$ if $0<λ<λ_{\rm min}(g)$ then the trivial solution is globally asymptotically stable; $(b)$ if $λ_{\rm min}(g)<λ<λ_{\rm max}(g)$ then $e_λ$ is globally asymptotically stable; $(c)$ if $λ_{\rm max}(g)<λ$ then any non-trivial solution blows up in finite time.