Abstract

We investigate the behavior at infinity of a special dissipative system, which consists of two steepest descent equations coupled by a non-autonomous conservative repulsion. The repulsion term is parametrized in time by an asymptotically vanishing factor. We show that under a simple slow parametrization assumption the limit points, if any, must satisfy an optimality condition involving the repulsion potential. Under some additional restrictive conditions, requiring in particular the equilibrium set to be one-dimensional, we obtain an asymptotic convergence result. Finally, some open problems are listed. © 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.