Asymptotic behaviour for local and nonlocal evolution equations on metric graphs with some edges of infinite length

Abstract

We study local (the heat equation) and nonlocal (convolution-type problems with an integrable kernel) evolution problems on a metric connected finite graph in which some of the edges have infinity length. We show that the asymptotic behaviour of the solutions to both local and nonlocal problems is given by the solution of the heat equation, but on a star-shaped graph in which there are only one node and as many infinite edges as in the original graph. In this way, we obtain that the compact component that consists in all the vertices and all the edges of finite length can be reduced to a single point when looking at the asymptotic behaviour of the solutions. For this star-shaped limit problem, the asymptotic behaviour of the solutions is just given by the solution to the heat equation in a half line with a Neumann boundary condition at $$x=0$$ and initial datum $$(2 M/N ) \delta _{x=0}$$ where M is the total mass of the initial condition for our original problem and N is the number of edges of infinite length. In addition, we show that solutions to the nonlocal problem converge, when we rescale the kernel, to solutions to the heat equation (the local problem), that is, we find a relaxation limit.