Stability of planar fronts for a non--local phase kinetics equation with a conservation law in $D \le 3$

Abstract

We consider, in a $D-$dimensional cylinder, a non--local evolution equation that describes the evolution of the local magnetization in a continuum limit of an Ising spin system with Kawasaki dynamics and Kac potentials. We consider sub--critical temperatures, for which there are two local spatially homogeneous equilibria, and show a local nonlinear stability result for the minimum free energy profiles for the magnetization at the interface between regions of these two different local equilibrium; i.e., the planar fronts: We show that an initial perturbation of a front that is sufficiently small in $L^2$ norm, and sufficiently localized yields a solution that relaxes to another front, selected by a conservation law, in the $L^1$ norm at an algebraic rate that we explicitly estimate. We also obtain rates for the relaxation in the $L^2$ norm and the rate of decrease of the excess free energy.