Blow-up for quasilinear heat equations described by means of nonlinear Hamilton-Jacobi equations (Q1913659)

The paper is devoted to the study of asymptotic blow-up behavior of radially symmetric solutions to the semilinear equation \[ u_t= \Delta u+(1+u) (\log(1+u))^\beta. \] Here \(\beta>1\) is a fixed constant and the solutions \(u(x,t)= u(|x|,t) \geq 0\) are defined in a strip \(\Omega \times (0,T)\), where \(\Omega\) is either \(\mathbb{R}^N\) or the ball \(\{x\in \mathbb{R}^N: |x|<R\}\) with zero Dirichlet data, \(N\geq 1\). The authors continue their study on the critical case \(\beta=2\) [\textit{V. A. Galaktionov} and \textit{J. L. Vazquez}, SIAM J. Math. Anal. 24, No. 5, 1254-1276 (1993; Zbl 0813.35033)]. The paper under review makes a comparative study of the blow-up behavior in the whole parameter range \(1<\beta<\infty\) giving a complete description of the behavior in the sub-ranges \(\beta=2\), \(\beta>2\) and \(1< \beta <2\). The study is based on dynamical systems approach. Exact blow-up patterns are found as stationary solutions of some nonlinear Hamilton-Jacobi equation which controls the asymptotics. The results obtained remain true for the wider class of ``weakly quasilinear'' heat equations \[ u_t=\text{div} \biggl[\bigl(\log(1+u) \bigr)^\sigma \nabla u\biggr] +c_0(1+u) \bigl(\log(1+u) \bigr)^{\beta (\sigma+1)-\sigma} \] with \(\sigma>0\), \(\beta>1\), \(c_0>0\) being constants.