Regularity and long-time behavior of nonlocal heat flows

Abstract

This article considers nonlocal heat flows into a singular target space. The problem is the parabolic analogue of a stationary problem that arises as the limit of a singularly perturbed elliptic system. It also provides a gradient flow approach to an optimal eigenvalue partition problem that, in light of the work of Caffarelli and Lin, is equivalent to a constrained harmonic mapping problem. In particular, we show that weak solutions of our heat equation converge as time approaches infinity to stationary solutions of this mapping problem. For these weak solutions, we also prove Lipschitz continuity and regularity of free interfaces, making use of a parabolic Almgren-type monotonicity formula.