Superexponential growth or decay in the heat equation with a logarithmic nonlinearity

Abstract

We consider the heat equation with a logarithmic nonlinearity, on thereal line. For a suitable sign in front of the nonlinearity, weestablish the existence and uniqueness of solutions of the Cauchyproblem, for a well-adapted class of initial data. Explicitcomputations in the case of Gaussian data lead to various scenariiwhich are richer than the mere comparison with the ODE mechanism,involving (like in the ODE case) double exponential growth or decayfor large time. Finally, we prove that such phenomena remain, in the case of compactlysupported initial data.