We develop a theory of eventually positive C 0 -semigroups on Banach lattices, that is, of semigroups for which, for every positive initial value, the solution of the corresponding Cauchy problem becomes positive for large times. We give characterisations of such semigroups by means of spectral and resolvent properties of the corresponding generators, complementing existing results on spaces of continuous functions. This enables us to treat a range of new examples including the square of the Laplacian with Dirichlet boundary conditions, the bi-Laplacian on L p -spaces, the Dirichlet-to-Neumann operator on L 2 and the Laplacian with non-local boundary conditions on L 2 within the one unified theory. We also introduce and analyse a weaker notion of eventual positivity which we call "asymptotic positivity", where trajectories associated with positive initial data converge to the positive cone in the Banach lattice as t → ∞. This allows us to discuss further examples which do not fall within the above-mentioned framework, among them a network flow with non-positive mass transition and a certain delay differential equation.

We develop a systematic theory of eventually positive semigroups of linear operators mainly on spaces of continuous functions. By eventually positive we mean that for every positive initial condition the solution to the corresponding Cauchy problem is positive for large enough time. Characterisations of such semigroups are given by means of resolvent properties of the generator and Perron-Frobenius type spectral conditions. We apply these characterisations to prove eventual positivity of several examples of semigroups including some generated by fourth order elliptic operators and a delay differential equation. We also consider eventually positive semigroups on arbitrary Banach lattices and establish several results for their spectral bound which were previously only known for positive semigroups.

Consider a 0 -semigroup ( ) ≥0 on a function space or, more generally, on a Banach lattice . We prove a sufficient criterion for the operators to be positive for all sufficiently large times , while the semigroup itself might not be positive. This complements recently established criteria for the individual orbits of the semigroup to become eventually positive for all positive initial values. We apply our main result to study the qualitative behaviour of the solutions to various partial differential equations. * Supported by a scholarship within the scope of the LGFG Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

We present new conditions for semigroups of positive operators to converge strongly as time tends to infinity. Our proofs are based on a novel approach combining the well-known splitting theorem by Jacobs, de Leeuw and Glicksberg with a purely algebraic result about positive group representations. Thus we obtain convergence theorems not only for one-parameter semigroups but for a much larger class of semigroup representations.Our results allow for a unified treatment of various theorems from the literature that, under technical assumptions, a bounded positive C 0 -semigroup containing or dominating a kernel operator converges strongly as t → ∞. We gain new insights into the structure theoretical background of those theorems and generalise them in several respects; especially we drop any kind of continuity or regularity assumption with respect to the time parameter.