On the Nature of Ill-Posedness of the Forward-Backward Heat Equation

We study the Cauchy problem with periodic initial data for the forward-backward heat equation defined by a J-self-adjoint linear operator L depending on a small parameter. The problem originates from the lubrication approximation of a viscous fluid film on the inner surface of a rotating cylinder. For a certain range of the parameter we rigorously prove the conjecture, based on numerical evidence, that the complete set of eigenvectors of the operator L does not form a Riesz basis in \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathcal{L}^2(-\pi, \pi)$$\end{document}. Our method can be applied to a wide range of evolution problems given by PT-symmetric operators.