Global dynamics and robustness of reversible autocatalytic reaction-diffusion systems

Global asymptotic dynamics of a representative cubic-autocatalytic reaction-diffusion system, the reversible Selkov equations, are investigated. This system features two pairs of oppositely signed nonlinear terms so that the asymptotic dissipative condition is not satisfied, which causes substantial difficulties in an attempt to attest that the longtime dynamics are asymptotically dissipative. An L-2 to H-1 global attractor of finite fractal dimension is shown to exist for the semiflow of the weak solutions of the reversible Selkov equations with the Dirichlet boundary condition on a bounded domain of dimension n <= 3. A new method of rescaling and grouping estimation is used to prove the absorbing property and the asymptotical compactness. Importantly, the upper semicontinuity (robustness) in the H-1 product space of the global attractors for the family of solution semiflows with respect to the reverse reaction rate as it tends to zero is proved through a new approach of transformative decomposition to overcome the barrier of the perturbed singularity between the reversible and non-reversible systems by showing the uniform dissipativity and the uniformly bounded evolution of the union of global attractors under the bundle of reversible and non-reversible semiflows. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.