A Geometrical Approach to Front Propagation Problems in Bounded
Domains with Neumann-Type Boundary Conditions
Guy Barles and Francesca Da Lio
In this article, we are interested in the
asymptotic behavior of the solutions of scaled
reaction-diffusion equations, set in bounded
domains, associated with Neumann type boundary
conditions, and more precisely in cases when such
behavior is described in terms of moving
interfaces. A typical example is the case of the
Allen-Cahn Equation associated with an oblique
derivative boundary condition where the generation
of a front moving by mean curvature with an angle
boundary condition is shown. In order to
rigourously establish such results, we modify and
adapt the ``geometrical approach'' introduced by
P.E. Souganidis and the first author for solving
problems set in RN: we provide a new definition
of weak solution for the global-in-time motion of
fronts with curvature dependent velocities and
with angle boundary conditions, which turns out to
be equivalent to the level-set approach when there
is no fattening phenomenon. We use this
definition to obtain the asymptotic behavior of
the solutions of a large class of
reaction-diffusion equations, including the case
of quasilinear ones and (x,t)- dependent reaction
terms, but also with any, possibly nonlinear,
Neumann boundary conditions.