Evolution equations on time-dependent intervals

TL;DR

This paper develops a method to solve linear evolution PDEs on moving intervals by characterizing unknown boundary values through integral equations, with applications to heat and Schrödinger equations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to handle boundary value problems on time-dependent domains, providing explicit integral equations for boundary data.

Findings

Explicit integral equations for heat equation boundary values

Extension of method to Schrödinger equation with restrictions

Solution characterization on moving spatial domains

Abstract

We study initial boundary value problems for linear evolution partial differential equations (PDEs) posed on a time-dependent interval $l_1(t)<x<l_2(t)$, $0<t<T$, where $l_1(t)$ and $l_2(t)$ are given, real, differentiable functions, and $T$ is an arbitrary constant. For such problems, we show how to characterise the unknown boundary values in terms of the given initial and boundary conditions. As illustrative examples we consider the heat equation and the linear Schr\"{o}dinger equation. In the first case, the unknown Neumann boundary values are expressed in terms of the Dirichlet boundary values and of the initial value through the unique solution of a system of two linear integral equations with explicit kernels. In the second case, a similar result can be proved but only for a more restrictive class of boundary curves.}