Stability and Spectral Comparison of a Reaction–Diffusion System with Mass Conservation

Abstract

We study the global-in-time behavior of solutions to a reaction–diffusion system with mass conservation, as proposed in the study of cell polarity, particularly, the second model of the work by Otsuji et al. (PLoS Comput Biol 3:e108, 2007). First, we show the existence of a Lyapunov function and confirm the global-in-time existence of the solution with compact orbit. Then we study the stability and instability of stationary solutions by using the semi-unfolding-minimality property and the spectral comparison. As a result the dynamics near the stationary solutions is qualitatively characterized by a variational function.