Design of Sturm global attractors 1: Meanders with three noses, and reversibility

We systematically explore a simple class of global attractors, called Sturm due to nodal properties, for the semilinear scalar parabolic PDE \begin{equation*}\label{eq:} u_t = u_{xx} + f(x,u,u_x) %\tag{$\ast$} \end{equation} on the unit interval $0<x<1$, under Neumann boundary conditions. This models the interplay of reaction, advection, and diffusion. Our classification is based on the Sturm meanders, which arise from a shooting approach to the ODE boundary value problem of equilibrium solutions $u_t=0$. Specifically, we address meanders with only three “noses”, each of which is innermost to a nested family of upper or lower meander arcs. The Chafee-Infante paradigm, with cubic nonlinearity $f=f(u)$, features just two noses. Our results on the gradient-like global PDE dynamics include a precise description of the connection graphs. The edges denote PDE heteroclinic orbits $v_1⇝v_2$ between equilibrium vertices $v_1,v_2$ of adjacent Morse index. The global attractor turns out to be a ball of dimension $d$, given as the closure of the unstable manifold $W^u(\mathcal{O})$ of the unique equilibrium with maximal Morse index $d$. Surprisingly, for parabolic PDEs based on irreversible diffusion, the connection graph indicates time reversibility on the ($d$-1)-sphere boundary of the global attractor.