In this paper, we study some qualitative properties for an evolution problem that combines local and nonlocal diffusion operators acting in two different subdomains and, coupled in such a way that, the resulting evolution problem is the gradient flow of an energy functional. The coupling takes place at the interface between the regions in which the different diffusions take place. We prove existence and uniqueness results, as well as, that the model preserves the total mass of the initial condition. We also study the asymptotic behavior of the solutions. Finally, we show a suitable way to recover the heat equation at the whole domain from taking the limit at the nonlocal rescaled kernel.
In this paper, we consider the inverse reaction coefficient problems (IRCPs) for nonlocal diffusion equation and multi-term time-fractional nonlocal diffusion equation from the average nonlocal flux data in external reaction region. Based on the nonlocal maximum principle we established, the uniqueness theorem for IRCPs are proved.
We study front propagation phenomena for a large class of nonlocal KPP-type reaction-diffusion equations in oscillatory environments, which model various forms of population growth with periodic dependence. The nonlocal diffusion is an anisotropic integro-differential operator of order $α\in (0,2)$.
We give an application of the Crandall-Rabinowitz theorem on local bifurcation to a system of nonlinear parabolic equations with nonlocal reaction and cross-diffusion terms as well as nonlocal initial conditions. The system arises as steady-state equations of two interacting age-structured populations.
This work addresses the regularity of solutions for a nonlocal diffusion equation over the space of periodic distributions. The spatial operator for the nonlocal diffusion equation is given by a nonlocal Laplace operator with a compactly supported integral kernel. We follow a unified approach based on the Fourier multipliers of the nonlocal Laplace operator, which allows the study of regular as well as distributional solutions of the nonlocal diffusion equation, integrable as well as singular kernels, in any spatial dimension. In addition, the results extend beyond operators with singular kern…
We investigate the differentiability issue of the drift-diffusion equation with nonlocal Lévy-type diffusion at either supercritical or critical type cases. Under the suitable conditions on the drift velocity and the forcing term in terms of the spatial Hölder regularity, we prove that the vanishing viscosity solution is differentiable with some Hölder continuous derivatives for any positive time.
We introduce a spatially extended transport kinetic FitzHugh-Nagumo model with forced local interactions and prove that its hydrodynamic limit converges towards the classical nonlocal reaction-diffusion FitzHugh-Nagumo system. Our approach is based on a relative entropy method, where the macroscopic quantities of the kinetic model are compared with the solution to the nonlocal reaction-diffusion system. This approach allows to make the rigorous link between kinetic and reaction-diffusion models.
We present a model for nonlocal diffusion with Neumann boundary conditions in a bounded smooth domain prescribing the flux through the boundary. We study the limit of this family of nonlocal diffusion operators when a rescaling parameter related to the kernel of the nonlocal operator goes to zero. We prove that the solutions of this family of problems converge to a solution of the heat equation with Neumann boundary conditions.
In this paper we consider a model that involves nonlocal diffusion and a classical convective term. Using a scaling argument and a new compactness argument we obtain the first term in the asymptotic behavior of the solutions.
We show how the Stefan type free boundary problem with random diffusion in one space dimension can be approximated by the corresponding free boundary problem with nonlocal diffusion. The approximation problem is a slightly modified version of the nonlocal diffusion problem with free boundaries considered in [4,8]. The proof relies on the introduction of several auxiliary free boundary problems and constructions of delicate upper and lower solutions for these problems. As usual, the approximation is achieved by choosing the kernel function in the nonlocal diffusion term of the form $J_ε(x)=\fra…
We establish the logarithmic Bramson correction to the position of solutions to the Fisher--KPP equation with nonlocal diffusion. Solutions with step-like initial data typically resemble a front at position $c_{*} t - \frac{3}{2 λ_{*}} \log t + \mathcal{O}(1)$ for explicit constants $c_{*}$ and $λ_{*}$. However, certain singular diffusions exhibit more exotic behavior.
We construct an example of a one-dimensional parabolic integro-differential equation with nonlocal diffusion which does not have asymptotically finite-dimensional dynamics in the corresponding state space. This example is more natural in the class of evolutionary equations of parabolic type than those known earlier.
In this paper, we study the global dynamics of a general $2\times 2$ competition models with nonsymmetric nonlocal dispersal operators. Our results indicate that local stability implies global stability provided that one of the diffusion rates is sufficiently small. This paper continues the work in \cite{BaiLi2017}, where competition models with symmetric nonlocal operators are considered.
We establish a priori Lipschitz estimates for equations with mixed local and nonlocal diffusion, coercive gradient terms and unbounded right-hand side in Lebesgue spaces through an integral refinement of the Bernstein method. This relies on a nonlinear, nonlocal and variational version of the Bochner identity that involves the adjoint equation of the linearization of the initial problem.
The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive study of some linear nonlocal diffusion problems in metric measure spaces. These include, for example, open subsets in $\mathbb{R}^N$, graphs, manifolds, multi-structures or some fractal sets. For this, we study regularity, compactness, positiveness and the spectrum of the stationary nonlocal operator. Then we study the solutions of linear evolution nonlocal diffusion problems, with emphasis in similarities and differences with the standard heat equation in smooth domains. In particular prove weak and strong maximum principles and describe th…
We study reaction-diffusion equations in cylinders with possibly nonlinear diffusion and possibly nonlinear Neumann boundary conditions. We provide a geometric Poincaré-type inequality and classification results for stable solutions, and we apply them to the study of an associated nonlocal problem. We also establish a counterexample in the corresponding framework for the fractional Laplacian.
In this paper we consider a subcritical model that involves nonlocal diffusion and a classical convective term. In spite of the nonlocal diffusion, we obtain an Oleinik type estimate similar to the case when the diffusion is local. First we prove that the entropy solution can be obtained by adding a small viscous term $μu_{xx}$ and letting $μ\to 0$. Then, by using uniform Oleinik estimates for the viscous approximation we are able to prove the well-posedness of the entropy solutions with $L^1$-initial data. Using a scaling argument and hyperbolic estimates given by Oleinik's inequality, we obt…
In this paper we address the regularity issues of drift-diffusion equation with nonlocal diffusion, where the diffusion operator is in the realm of stable-type Lévy operator and the velocity field is defined from the considered quantity by a zero-order pseudo-differential operator. Through using the method of nonlocal maximum principle in a unified way, we prove the eventual regularity result in the supercritical type cases and the global regularity at some logarithmically supercritical cases. The feature of these results is that the time after which the solution is smoothly regular in the sup…
We prove existence, uniqueness and regularity of solutions of nonlocal heat equations associated to anisotropic stable diffusion operators. The main features are that the right-hand side has very few regularity and that the spectral measure can be singular in some directions. The proofs require having good enough estimates for the corresponding heat kernels and their derivatives.
In this paper, we first consider two scalar nonlocal diffusion problems with a free boundary and a fixed boundary. We obtain the global existence, uniqueness and longtime behaviour of solution of these two problems. The spreading-vanishing dichotomy and sharp criteria for spreading and vanishing are established. We also prove that accelerated spreading could happen if and only if a threshold condition is violated by kernel function. Then we discuss a classical Lotka-Volterra predator-prey model with nonlocal diffusions and a free boundary which can be seen as nonlocal diffusion counterpart of …
We study a class of free boundary systems with nonlocal diffusion, which are natural extensions of the corresponding free boundary problems of reaction diffusion systems. As before the free boundary represents the spreading front of the species, but here the population dispersal is described by "nonlocal diffusion" instead of "local diffusion". We prove that such a nonlocal diffusion problem with free boundary has a unique global solution, and for models with Lotka-Volterra type competition or predator-prey growth terms, we show that a spreading-vanishing dichotomy holds, and obtain criteria f…
We develop general heterogeneous nonlocal diffusion models and investigate their connection to local diffusion models by taking a singular limit of focusing kernels. We reveal the link between the two groups of diffusion equations which include both spatial heterogeneity and anisotropy. In particular, we introduce the notion of deciding factors which single out a nonlocal diffusion model and typically consist of the total jump rate and the average jump length. In this framework, we also discuss the dependence of the profile of the steady state solutions on these deciding factors, thus shedding…
A mutualist model with nonlocal diffusions and a free boundary is first considered. We prove that this problem has a unique solution defined $t\ge0$, and its dynamics are governed by a spreading-vanishing dichotomy. Some criteria for spreading and vanishing are also given. Of particular importance is that we find that the solution of this problem has quite rich longtime behaviors, which vary with the conditions satisfied by kernel functions and are much different from those of the counterpart with local diffusion and free boundary. At last, we extend these results to the model with nonlocal di…
In this paper we study nonlocal problems that are analogous to the local ones given by the Laplacian or the p-Laplacian with dynamical boundary conditions. We deal both with smooth and with singular kernels and show existence and uniqueness of solutions and study their asymptotic behaviour as t goes to infinity.
The aim of this paper is to study the generalized Fisher-KPP equation with nonlocal diffusion. In specific we prove the existence of a critical speed so that traveling front type solutions exist up to this critical speed and non-existence of traveling fronts below this critical value. Moreover, we obtain uniqueness, up to translation, and decay estimates of these traveling fronts.
Local-to-Nonlocal (LtN) coupling refers to a class of methods aimed at combining nonlocal and local modeling descriptions of a given system into a unified coupled representation. This allows to consolidate the accuracy of nonlocal models with the computational expediency of their local counterparts, while often simultaneously removing additional nonlocal modeling issues such as surface effects. The number and variety of proposed LtN coupling approaches have significantly grown in recent year, yet the field of LtN coupling continues to grow and still has open challenges. This review provides an…
We are concerned with travelling wave solutions arising in a reaction diffusion equation with bistable and nonlocal nonlinearity, for which the comparison principle does not hold. Stability of the equilibrium $u\equiv 1$ is not assumed. We construct a travelling wave solution connecting 0 to an unknown steady state, which is "above and away", from the intermediate equilibrium. For focusing kernels we prove that, as expected, the wave connects 0 to 1. Our results also apply readily to the nonlocal ignition case.
We consider an epidemic model with nonlocal diffusion and free boundaries, which describes the evolution of an infectious agents with nonlocal diffusion and the infected humans without diffusion, where humans get infected by the agents, and infected humans in return contribute to the growth of the agents. The model can be viewed as a nonlocal version of the free boundary model studied by Ahn, Beak and Lin \cite{ABL2016}, with its origin tracing back to Capasso et al. \cite{CP1979, CM1981}. We prove that the problem has a unique solution defined for all $t>0$, and its long-time dynamical behavi…
This is part II of our study on the free boundary problems with nonlocal and local diffusions. In part I, we obtained the existence, uniqueness, regularity and estimates of global solution. In part II here, we show a spreading-vanishing dichotomy, and provide the criteria of spreading and vanishing, as well as the long time behavior of solution when spreading happens.
We investigate a class of systems of partial differential equations with nonlinear cross-diffusion and nonlocal interactions, which are of interest in several contexts in social sciences, finance, biology, and real world applications. Assuming a uniform "coerciveness" assumption on the diffusion part, which allows to consider a large class of systems with degenerate cross-diffusion (i.e. of porous medium type) and relaxes sets of assumptions previously considered in the literature, we prove global-in-time existence of weak solutions by means of a semi-implicit version of the Jordan-Kinderlehre…
A general reaction-diffusion equation with spatiotemporal delay and homogeneous Dirichlet boundary condition is considered. The existence and stability of positive steady state solutions are proved via studying an equivalent reaction-diffusion system without nonlocal and delay structure and applying local and global bifurcation theory. The global structure of the set of steady states is characterized according to type of nonlinearities and diffusion coefficient. Our general results are applied to diffusive logistic growth models and Nicholson's blowflies type models.
We consider here a model of accelerating fronts, introduced in [2], consisting of one equation with nonlocal diffusion on a line, coupled via the boundary condition with a reaction-diffusion equation of the Fisher-KPP type in the upper half-plane. It was proved in [2] that the propagation is accelerated in the direction of the line exponentially fast in time. We make this estimate more precise by computing an explicit correction that is algebraic in time. Unexpectedly, the solution mimicks the behaviour of the solution of the equation linearised around the rest state 0 in a closer way than in …
We prove an existence result for nonlinear diffusion equations in the presence of a nonlocal density-dependent drift which is not necessarily potential. The proof is constructive and based on the Helmholtz decomposition of the drift and a splitting scheme. The splitting scheme combines transport steps by the divergence-free part of the drift and semi-implicit minimization steps à la Jordan-Kinderlherer-Otto to deal with the potential part.
We study a nonlocal Venttsel' problem in a non-convex bounded domain with a Koch-type boundary. Regularity results of the strict solution are proved in weighted Sobolev spaces. The numerical approximation of the problem is carried out and optimal a priori error estimates are obtained.
We present a finite element implementation for the steady-state nonlocal Dirichlet problem with homogeneous volume constraints. Here, the nonlocal diffusion operator is defined as integral operator characterized by a certain kernel function. We assume that the domain is an arbitrary $d$-dimensional hyperrectangle and the kernel is translation invariant. Under these assumptions, we carefully analyze the structure of the stiffness matrix resulting from a continuous Galerkin method with multilinear elements and exploit this structure in order to cope with the curse of dimensionality associated to…
We present an approach to handle Dirichlet type nonlocal boundary conditions for nonlocal diffusion models with a finite range of nonlocal interactions. Our approach utilizes a linear extrapolation of prescribed boundary data. A novelty is, instead of using local gradients of the boundary data that are not available a priori, we incorporate nonlocal gradient operators into the formulation to generalize the finite differences-based methods which are pervasive in literature; our particular choice of the nonlocal gradient operators is based on the interplay between a constant kernel function and …
This is a brief "proof of concept" article that shows nonlocal diffusion is well suited to the study of pattern formation and the particular application of public sentiment. We use a nonlocal reaction-diffusion equation to model the evolution of public sentiment in a population that interacts with other individuals. We employ a pseudo-random convolution kernel as a symmetric matrix of lognormally distributed values. This kernel models the influence of individuals when interacting with others. Change in sentiment emerges and may converge to a polarized state. Other more complicated states occur…
We introduce and study a class of free boundary models with "nonlocal diffusion", which are natural extensions of the free boundary models in Du and Lin [17] and elsewhere, where "local diffusion" is used to describe the population dispersal, with the free boundary representing the spreading front of the species. We show that this nonlocal problem has a unique solution defined for all time, and then examine its long-time dynamical behavior when the growth function is of Fisher-KPP type. We prove that a spreading-vanishing dichotomy holds, though for the spreading-vanishing criteria significant…
Age-structured models with nonlocal diffusion arise naturally in describing the population dynamics of biological species and the transmission dynamics of infectious diseases in which individuals disperse nonlocally and interact each other and the age structure of individuals matters. In the first part of our series papers, we study the principal spectral theory of age-structured models with nonlocal diffusion of Dirichlet type. First, we provide two criteria on the existence of principal eigenvalues by using the theory of resolvent positive operators with their perturbations. Then we define t…
We report on recent progress in the study of evolution processes involving degenerate parabolic equations what may exhibit free boundaries. The equations we have selected follow to recent trends in diffusion theory: considering anomalous diffusion with long-range effects, which leads to fractional operators or other operators involving kernels with large tails; and the combination of diffusion and aggregation effects, leading to delicate long-term equilibria whose description is still incipient.
The aim of this paper is to give a stochastic representation for the solution to a natural extension of the Caputo-type evolution equation. The nonlocal-in-time operator is defined by a hypersingular integral with a (possibly time-dependent) kernel function, and it results in a model which serves a bridge between normal diffusion and anomalous diffusion. We derive the stochastic representation for the weak solution of the nonlocal-in-time problem in case of nonsmooth data. We do so by starting from an auxiliary Caputo-type evolution equation with a specific forcing term. Numerical simulations …
In this paper, we study the asymptotic behavior of the solutions of nonlocal bistable reaction-diffusion equations starting from compactly supported initial conditions. Depending on the relationship between the nonlinearity, the interaction kernel and the diffusion coefficient, we show that the solutions can either: propagate, go extinct or remain pinned. We especially focus on the latter regime where solutions are pinned by thoroughly studying discontinuous ground state solutions of the problem for a specific interaction kernel serving as a case study. We also present a detailed numerical ana…
This paper concerns with existence, uniqueness and asymptotic behavior of the solutions for a nonlocal coupled system of reaction-diffusion. We prove the existence and uniqueness of weak solutions by the Faedo-Galerkin method and exponential decay of solutions by the classic energy method. We improve the results obtained by Chipot-Lovato and Menezes for coupled systems. A numerical scheme is presented.
We study a class of free boundary problems of ecological models with nonlocal and local diffusions, which are natural extensions of free boundary problems of reaction diffusion systems in there local diffusions are used to describe the population dispersal, with the free boundary representing the spreading front of the species. We prove that such kind of nonlocal and local diffusion problems has a unique global solution, and then show that a spreading-vanishing dichotomy holds. Moreover, criteria of spreading and vanishing, and long time behavior of solution when spreading happens are establis…
Nonlocal cross-diffusion systems on the torus, arising in population dynamics and neuroscience, are analyzed. The global existence of weak solutions, the weak-strong uniqueness, and the localization limit are proved. The kernels are assumed to be positive definite and in detailed balance. The proofs are based on entropy estimates coming from Shannon-type and Rao-type entropies, while the weak-strong uniqueness result follows from the relative entropy method. The existence and uniqueness theorems hold for nondifferentiable kernels. The associated local cross-diffusion system, derived in the loc…
The paper focuses on positive solutions to a coupled system of parabolic equations with nonlocal initial conditions. Such equations arise as steady-state equations in an age-structured predator-prey model with diffusion. By using global bifurcation techniques, we describe the structure of the set of positive solutions with respect to two parameters measuring the intensities of the fertility of the species. In particular, we establish co-existence steady-states, i.e. solutions which are nonnegative and nontrivial in both components.
A time-space fractional reaction-diffusion equation in a bounded domain is considered. Under some conditions on the initial data, we show that solutions may experience blow-up in a finite time. However, for realistic initial conditions, solutions are global in time. Moreover, the asymptotic behavior of bounded solutions is analysed.
