Asymptotic one-dimensional symmetry for the Fisher-KPP equation

Abstract

Let $u$ be a solution of the Fisher-KPP equation $$ \partial_t u=\Delta u+f(u),\quad t>0,\ x\in\mathbb{R}^N. $$ We address the following question: does $u$ become locally planar as $t\to+\infty$ ? Namely, does $u(t_n,x_n+\cdot)$ converge locally uniformly, up to subsequences, towards a one-dimensional function, for any sequence $((t_n,x_n))_{n\in\mathbb{N}}$ in $(0,+\infty)\times\mathbb{R}^N$ such that $t_n\to+\infty$ as $n\to+\infty$ ? This question is in the spirit of a conjecture of De Giorgi for stationary solutions of Allen-Cahn equations. The answer depends on the initial datum $u_0$ of $u$. It is known to be affirmative when the support of $u_0$ is bounded or when it lies between two parallel half-spaces. Instead, the answer is negative when the support of $u_0$ is "V-shaped". We prove here that $u$ is asymptotically locally planar when the support of $u_0$ is a convex set (satisfying in addition a uniform interior ball condition), or, more generally, when it is at finite Hausdorff distance from a convex set. We actually derive the result under an even more general geometric hypothesis on the support of $u_0$. We recover in particular the aforementioned results known in the literature. We further characterize the set of directions in which $u$ is asymptotically locally planar, and we show that the asymptotic profiles are monotone. Our results apply in particular when the support of $u_0$ is the subgraph of a function with vanishing global mean.