Gradient estimates for a quasilinear parabolic equation of the mean curvature type (Q678788)

The authors prove the estimate \( \|\nabla u(\cdot,t)\|_{\infty} \leq C t^{-\mu} e^{-\lambda t} \|\nabla u_{0}\|_{p} \) for weak solutions of the quasilinear problem \[ u_{t} - \nabla\cdot( \sigma(|\nabla u|^{2} \nabla u)) = 0 \] with initial data \(u(\cdot,0) = u_{0}\) and zero Dirichlet boundary data, in a bounded domain in \(\mathbb R^{N}\) whose boundary has nonnegative mean curvature with respect to the outward normal. The class of problems that is studied includes the mean curvature case \(\sigma(r) = (1 + r)^{-1/2}\). Here \(p > \max (3N/2, 3)\), \(\mu= N/(2p-3N)\), and \(\lambda > 0\). The proof uses Moser's iteration technique.