English

Sharp threshold for a one-dimensional thin film equation in the supercritical case

Analysis of PDEs 2026-05-18 v1

Abstract

We study a one-dimensional thin film equation combining competitive effects of aggregation and repulsion, where repulsion is modeled by fourth-order diffusion and aggregation by backward second-order degenerate diffusion with exponent m>0m>0. Under natural regularity constraints, we prove that for every m>0m>0, there exists a unique (up to the mass-critical case m=3m=3) nonnegative, radially decreasing steady state UU_* which coincides with the extremal function of the sharp Sz.-Nagy inequality and is simultaneously the global minimizer of the free energy. Using this variational characterization in the supercritical regime 3<m<3<m<\infty, we show that finite-time blow-up occurs for all initial data whose initial free energy lies below the positive threshold F(U)F(U_*), provided the Lm+1L^{m+1}-norm of the initial datum exceeds that of UU_*. Conversely, if the Lm+1L^{m+1}-norm is below that of UU_*, the solution exists globally and its second moment diverges as tt\to\infty. This sharp criterion significantly extends the previously known blow-up condition requiring negative free energy to a much wider class of initial data (see \cite{BP00}). Our results identify the steady state UU_* as the critical pivot linking variational structure to dynamical behavior, and provide a constructive method to determine blow-up versus global existence via an explicit Lm+1L^{m+1}-norm comparison.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.15634,
  title  = {Sharp threshold for a one-dimensional thin film equation in the supercritical case},
  author = {Shen Bian},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.15634},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-22T07:13:44.939Z