Almost automorphically forced flows on $S^1$ or $\mathbb{R}$ in one-dimensional almost periodic semilinear heat equations

TL;DR

This paper studies the long-term behavior of almost-periodically forced reaction-diffusion equations on a circle, showing that minimal invariant sets resemble almost automorphically forced flows and exploring their topological structure.

Contribution

It characterizes the structure of minimal sets in almost-periodically forced heat equations, revealing their conjugacy to almost automorphically forced flows on $S^1$ and $\\mathbb{R}$, and provides new insights into their asymptotic dynamics.

Findings

Minimal sets can be residually embedded into almost automorphically forced flows on $S^1$.

Flow on minimal sets is topologically conjugate to almost periodically forced flows under certain symmetries.

The $\\omega$-limit set of bounded orbits contains at most two minimal sets not related by phase translation.

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the asymptotic dynamics of the skew-product semiflow generated by the following time almost-periodically forced scalar reaction-diffusion equation \begin{equation}\label{eq0} u_{t}=u_{xx}+f(t,u,u_{x}),\,\,t>0,\, 0<x<L \end{equation} with periodic boundary condition \begin{equation} \label{bdc1} u(t,0)=u(t,L),\quad u_x(t,0)=u_x(t,L), \end{equation} where $f$ is uniformly almost periodic in $t$. In particular, we study the topological structure of the limit sets of the skew-product semiflow. It is proved that any compact minimal invariant set (throughout this paper, we refer to it as a minimal set) can be residually embedded into an invariant set of some almost automorphically-forced flow on a circle $S^1=\mathbb{R}/L\mathbb{Z}$. Particularly, if $f(t,u,p)=f(t,u,-p)$, then the flow on a minimal set topologically conjugates to an almost periodically-forced minimal flow on $\mathbb{R}$. Moreover, it is proved that the $\omega$-limit set of any bounded orbit contains at most two minimal sets that cannot be obtained from each other by phase translation. In addition, we further consider the asymptotic dynamics of the skew-product semiflow generated by \eqref{eq0} with Neumann boundary condition \begin{equation*} \label{bcd2} u_x(t,0)=u_x(t,L)=0, \end{equation*} or Dirichlet boundary condition \begin{equation*}\label{bdc3} u(t,0)=u(t,L)=0. \end{equation*} Under certain direct assumptions on $f$, it is proved in this paper that the flow on any minimal set of \eqref{eq0}, with Neumann boundary condition or Dirichlet boundary condition, topologically conjugates to an almost periodically-forced minimal flow on $\mathbb{R}$. Finally, a counterexample is given to show that even for quasi-periodic equations, the results we obtain here cannot be further improved in general.