Asymptotic behavior for the heat equation in nonhomogeneous media with critical density

Razvan Iagar, Ariel Sánchez

Published 2012-06-06, updated 2013-02-22Version 2

We study the asymptotic behavior of solutions to the heat equation in nonhomogeneous media with critical singular density $$ |x|^{-2}\partial_{t}u=\Delta u, \quad \hbox{in} \ \real^N\times(0,\infty). $$ The asymptotic behavior proves to have some interesting and quite striking properties. We show that there are two completely different asymptotic profiles depending on whether the initial data $u_0$ vanishes at $x=0$ or not. Moreover, in the former the results are true only for radially symmetric solutions, and we provide counterexamples to convergence to symmetric profiles in the general case.