Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 2 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2025 / Paper 1 / 2 / b

The fastest temporal growth occurs for the lowest spatial eigenvalue, with $p=q=r=1$. Its growth rate isFor a generic initial condition its coefficient is nonzero, so this term determines the long-time behavior. In fact, every nonzero, nonnegative initial density has $a_{111}>0$, since the product of the three first sine eigenfunctions is strictly positive in the interior. ConsequentlyFor $L<L_{\mathrm{crit}}$ every term decays. At equality the first term is stationary and all higher terms decay: equality does not produce exponential growth. This is a reaction-diffusion equation threshold arising from competition between production and loss through the Dirichlet boundary condition.