A complete characterisation of local existence for semilinear heat equations in Lebesgue spaces (Q342598)

The paper under review deals with the semilinear heat equation \[ u_t-\Delta u=f(u), \] where \(f:[0,\infty)\to[0,\infty)\) is a continuous and non-decreasing function, not necessarily convex. The authors characterise those functions \(f\) for which the equation admits a local bounded solution in \(L^q(\Omega)\) for all non-negative initial data \(u_0\in L^q(\Omega)\) in the case when \(\Omega\subset\mathbb R^d\) is a bounded domain and Dirichlet boundary conditions are imposed on \(\partial\Omega\). In particular, it is proved that, for \(q\in(1,\infty)\), this holds if and only if \[ \limsup_{s\to\infty}\dfrac{f(s)}{s^{1+2q/d}}<\infty, \] and for \(q=1\) if and only if \[ \int_1^\infty \dfrac{F(s)}{s^{1+2/d}}ds<\infty\quad \text{with }F(s)=\sup_{1\leq t\leq s}\dfrac{f(t)}{t}. \] It is shown, moreover, that the same characterisations hold true for the equation posed in the whole space \(\mathbb R^d,\) provided that \[ \limsup_{s\to 0}\dfrac{f(s)}{s}<\infty. \]