Dirichlet Problem of a Delayed Reaction–Diffusion Equation on a Semi-infinite Interval

Abstract

We consider a nonlocal delayed reaction–diffusion equation in a semi-infinite interval that describes mature population of a single species with two age stages (immature and mature) and a fixed maturation period living in a spatially semi-infinite environment. Homogeneous Dirichlet condition is imposed at the finite end, accounting for a scenario that boundary is hostile to the species. Due to the lack of compactness and symmetry of the spatial domain, the global dynamics of the equation turns out to be a very challenging problem. We first establish a priori estimate for nontrivial solutions after exploring the delicate asymptotic properties of the nonlocal delayed effect and the diffusion operator. Using the estimate, we are able to show the repellency of the trivial equilibrium and the existence of a positive heterogeneous steady state under the Dirichlet boundary condition. We then employ the dynamical system arguments to establish the global attractivity of the heterogeneous steady state. As a byproduct, we also obtain the existence and global attractivity of the heterogeneous steady state for the bistable evolution equation in the whole space.