On the stability of a forward-backward heat equation

Abstract

In this paper we examine spectral properties of a family of periodic singular Sturm-Liouville problems which are highly non-self-adjoint but have purely real spectrum. The problem originated from the study of the lubrication approximation of a viscous fluid film in the inner surface of a rotating cylinder and has received a substantial amount of attention in recent years. Our main focus will be the determination of Schatten class inclusions for the resolvent operator and regularity properties of the associated evolution equation.