LOCAL UNIFORM CONVERGENCE AND EVENTUAL POSITIVITY OF SOLUTIONS TO BIHARMONIC HEAT EQUATIONS

We study the evolution equation associated with the biharmonic operator on infinite cylinders with bounded smooth cross-section subject to Dirichlet boundary conditions. The focus is on the asymptotic behavior and positivity properties of the solutions for large times. In particular, we derive the local eventual positivity of solutions. We furthermore prove the local eventual positivity of solutions to the biharmonic heat equation and its generalizations on Euclidean space. The main tools in our analysis are the Fourier transform and spectral methods.