A nonlocal two phase Stefan problem

TL;DR

This paper investigates a nonlocal two-phase Stefan problem involving phase transitions, establishing existence, uniqueness, and asymptotic behavior of solutions with sign changes, advancing the mathematical understanding of nonlocal phase change models.

Contribution

It develops a mathematical theory for sign-changing solutions of a nonlocal Stefan problem, including existence, uniqueness, and asymptotic analysis, which was previously unexplored.

Findings

Established existence and uniqueness of solutions.

Analyzed asymptotic behavior of sign-changing solutions.

Addressed challenges due to non-monotone phase evolution.

Abstract

We study a nonlocal version of the two-phase Stefan problem, which models a phase transition problem between two distinct phases evolving to distinct heat equations. Mathematically speaking, this consists in deriving a theory for sign-changing solutions of the equation, ut = J * v - v, v = {\Gamma}(u), where the monotone graph is given by {\Gamma}(s) = sign(s)(|s|-1)+ . We give general results of existence, uniqueness and comparison, in the spirit of [2]. Then we focus on the study of the asymptotic behaviour for sign-changing solutions, which present challenging difficulties due to the non-monotone evolution of each phase.