Focusing of an elongated hole in porous medium flow (Q5942852)

The authors study solutions to the porous medium equation \(\partial_t u=\Delta (u^m)\), whose initial distributions are positive in the exterior of a compact 2D region and zero outside. They assume that the initial interface is elongated and possesses reflectional symmetry with respect to the \(x\)- and \(y\)-axes. A numerical scheme is implemented, that adopts the numerical grid around the interface so as to maintain a high resolution as the interface shrinks to a point. For \(t\) tending to the focusing time \(T\), the interface becomes oval-like with lengths of the major and minor axes \(O(\sqrt{T-t})\), respectively. The aspect ratio is \(O(1/ \sqrt{T-t})\). By scaling and formal asymptotic arguments they derive an approximate solution which is valid for all \(m\). This approximation indicates that the numerically observed power law behavior for the major and minor axes is universal for all \(m>1\).