Well-Posedness of Initial-Boundary Value Problems for a Reaction-Diffusion Equation

A reaction-diffusion equation with power nonlinearity formulated either on the half-line or on the finite interval with nonzero boundary conditions is shown to be locally well-posed in the sense of Hadamard for data in Sobolev spaces. The result is established via a contraction mapping argument, taking advantage of a novel approach that utilizes the formula produced by the unified transform method of Fokas for the forced linear heat equation to obtain linear estimates analogous to those previously derived for the nonlinear Schr\"odinger, Korteweg-de Vries and "good" Boussinesq equations. Thus, the present work extends the recently introduced "unified transform method approach to well-posedness" from dispersive equations to diffusive ones.