Improved duality estimates and applications to reaction-diffusion equations

We present a refined duality estimate for parabolic equations. This estimate entails new results for systems of reaction-diffusion equations, including smoothness and exponential convergence towards equilibrium for equations with quadratic right-hand sides in two dimensions. For general systems in any space dimension, we obtain smooth solutions of reaction-diffusion systems coming out of reversible chemistry under an assumption that the diffusion coefficients are sufficiently close one to another.