Geometric blow-up of a dynamic Turing instability in the Swift-Hohenberg equation

TL;DR

This paper rigorously analyzes the dynamic Turing instability in the Swift-Hohenberg equation using a geometric blow-up method, deriving asymptotics and stability delay estimates for solutions in different symmetric and asymmetric cases.

Contribution

It introduces a novel geometric blow-up approach to analyze the slow passage through a Turing bifurcation in the Swift-Hohenberg equation, extending classical modulation theory to a dynamic setting.

Findings

Derived asymptotics for solutions in symmetric and asymmetric cases.

Proved the existence of delayed loss of stability in the symmetric case.

Provided lower bounds for the delay time in the bifurcation.

Abstract

We present a rigorous analysis of the slow passage through a Turing bifurcation in the Swift-Hohenberg equation using a novel approach based on geometric blow-up. We show that the formally derived multiple scales ansatz which is known from classical modulation theory can be adapted for use in the fast-slow setting, by reformulating it as a blow-up transformation. This leads to dynamically simpler modulation equations posed in the blown-up space, via a formal procedure which directly extends the established approach to the time-dependent setting. The modulation equations take the form of non-autonomous Ginzburg-Landau equations, which can be analysed within the blow-up. The asymptotics of solutions in weighted Sobelev spaces are given in two different cases: (i) A symmetric case featuring a delayed loss of stability, and (ii) A second case in which the symmetry is broken by a source term. In order to characterise the dynamics of the Swift-Hohenberg equation itself we derive rigorous estimates on the error of the dynamic modulation approximation. These estimates are obtained by bounding weak solutions to an evolution equation for the error which is also posed in the blown-up space. Using the error estimates obtained, we are able to infer the asymptotics of a large class of solutions to the dynamic Swift-Hohenberg equation. We provide rigorous asymptotics for solutions in both cases (i) and (ii). We also prove the existence of the delayed loss of stability in the symmetric case (i), and provide a lower bound for the delay time.