On the Well-Posedness of A High Order Convective Cahn-Hilliard Type Equations

: High order convective Cahn-Hilliard type equations describe the faceting of a growing surface, or the dynamics of phase transitions in ternary oil-water-surfactant systems. In this paper, we prove the well-posedness of the classical solutions for the Cauchy problem, associated with this equation.

The function u represents the slope of a surface, the constant κ is proportional to the deposition strength of an atomic flux, and the overall convective term κ∂ x u 2 stems from the normal impingement of the deposited atoms. The sixth order linear term ∂ 6 x u, in (1), comes from a curvature dependent regularization, and all other terms represent the anisotropy of the surface energy under surface diffusion. These equations became popular objects of theoretical studies in the last decade, because they do play an important role in material modeling. Equations based on the Mullins surface diffusion formula, such as in (1), are interesting, as they describe the morphology of crystalline surfaces. As complex interfaces and surfaces are more and more important in highly technological applications such as photovoltaics, the study of analytical aspects also gains momentum (see, [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]).
The existence and uniqueness of weak solutions of (1) with periodic boundary conditions is proven in [23], with κ > 0. A similar result is proven in [24], in two space dimensions. In [25], the authors derived stationary solutions of (1), while in [26], the problem for optimal control of (1) is analyzed. In [27], the problem of a global attractor is studied.
Taking κ = 0, (1) reads which is a Cahn-Hilliard type equation [28][29][30]. It describes dynamics of phase transitions in ternary oil-water-surfactant systems. One part of the surfactant is hydrophilic and the other one is lipophilic (and termed amphiphile). In the system, almost pure oil, almost pure water, and microemulsion which consist of a homogeneous, isotropic mixture of oil and water can coexist in equilibrium. The function u, in (6), represents the local difference between oil and water concentrations.
In [31] the existence of global attractors is analyzed and in [32] the existence of weak solutions for the initial -boundary-value problem for (6) with degenerate mobility is proven.
Assuming β = δ = 0 and α = a 2 = 0, (1) reads (7) arises in interesting physical situations, for example as a model for long waves on a viscous fluid owing down an inclined plane [33] and to derive drift waves in a plasma [34]. Equation (7) was derived also independently by Kuramoto [35][36][37] as a model for phase turbulence in reaction-diffusion systems and by Sivashinsky [38] as a model for plane flame propagation, describing the combined influence of diffusion and thermal conduction of the gas on the stability of a plane flame front. Equation (7) also describes incipient instabilities in a variety of physical and chemical systems [39][40][41]. Moreover, (7), which is also known as the Benney-Lin equation [42,43], was derived by Kuramoto in the study of phase turbulence in the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction [44].
The dynamical properties and the existence of exact solutions for (7) were investigated in [45][46][47][48][49][50]. In [51][52][53], the control problem for (7) with periodic boundary conditions, and on a bounded interval are studied, respectively. In [54], the problem of global exponential stabilization of (7) with periodic boundary conditions is analyzed. In [55], it is proposed a generalization of optimal control theory for (7), while in [56] the problem of global boundary control of (7) is considered. In [57], the existence of solitonic solutions for (7) is proven. In [58][59][60], the well-posedness of the Cauchy problem for (7) is proven, using the energy space technique, a priori estimates together with an application of the Cauchy-Kovalevskaya and the fixed point method, respectively. Finally, following [61][62][63], in [64], the convergence of the solution of (7) to the unique entropy one of the Burgers equation is proven.
The main result of this paper is the following theorem.
Compared to [23,31,65], we do not have additional assumption on the constants. Theorem 1 gives the global well-posedness of the classical solution of the Cauchy problem of (1). The argument of Theorem 1 relies on deriving suitable a priori estimates together with an application of the Fixed Point Theorem. Indeed, to make the argument completely rigorous we should approximate the initial datum with an analytic one. Considering the semigroup S t generated by the operator −β 2 ∂ 6 x u we rewrite (1) using the Duhamel formula Then standard arguments and the Fixed Point Theorem would give us the local in time existence of analytic solutions. The estimates will guarantee that these approximate solutions are indeed global in time and allow us to come back to the original initial datum.
The paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we prove some a priori estimates of (1). Those play a key role in the proof of our main result, which is given in Section 3.

A Priori Estimates
In this section, we prove some a priori estimates on u. We denote with C 0 the constants which depend only on the initial data, and with C(T), the constants which depend also on T.
We begin by proving the following lemma.

Remark 1.
In light of (9), we can consider the following function: Moreover, again by (9), we have that Lemma 2. Let T > 0. There exists a constant C(T) > 0, such that for every 0 ≤ t ≤ T.
There exists a constant C(T) > 0, such that for every 0 ≤ t ≤ T.
for every 0 ≤ t ≤ T.
for every 0 ≤ t ≤ T.
Proof. Let 0 ≤ t ≤ T. We begin by observing that by (42), Multiplying (1) by 2∂ 4 x u, thanks to (50), an integration on R gives Therefore, we have that Due to (22), (29) and the Young inequality, where D 1 is a positive constant, which will specified later. It follows from (51) that .
for every 0 ≤ t ≤ T.
Proof. Let 0 ≤ t ≤ T. We begin by observing that by (42), we have that Multiplying (1) by −2∂ 6 x u, thanks to (56), an integration on R gives Therefore, we have Due to (22), (29), (48), (49) and the Young inequality, where D 2 is a positive constant which will specified later. It follows from (57) that .
for every 0 ≤ t ≤ T.

Proof of Theorem 1
This section devoted to the proof of Theorem 1.
It follows from (69) that Observe that Therefore, by the Young inequality, where D 5 is a positive constant, which will specified later. Observe again that Consequently, by the Young inequality, where D 6 is a positive constant, which will specified later. It follows from (73) and (74) that . Taking We have . Therefore, It follows from (72)  Choosing The Gronwall Lemma and (66) gives ω(t, ·) 2 L 2 (R) + ds ≤ e C(T)t ω 0 L 2 (R) .

Conclusions
We considered the high order convective Cahn-Hilliard type equations that describe the faceting of a growing surface, or the dynamics of phase transitions in ternary oil-water-surfactant systems. We proved the well-posedness of the We considered the Cauchy problem and proved its well-posedness when the initial condition has zero mean and belongs to H 3 .