A necessary and sufficient condition for global existence for a degenerate parabolic boundary value problem (Q1269581)

Consider the degenerate parabolic boundary value problem \(u_t= \Delta\varphi (u)+f(u)\) on \(\Omega\times (0,\infty)\), in which \(\Omega\) is a bounded domain in \(\mathbb{R}^N\), and the \(C([0, \infty))\) functions \(f\) and \(\varphi\) are nonnegative and nondecreasing with \(\varphi(s) f(s)>0\) if \(s>0\) and \(\varphi(0)=0\). Assume homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions and an initial condition that is nonnegative, nontrivial, and continuous on \(\overline \Omega\). Because the function \(\varphi\) is not sufficiently nice to allow this problem to have a classical solution, we consider generalized solutions in a manner similar to that of \textit{P. Benilan}, \textit{M. G. Crandall}, and \textit{P. Sacks} [Appl. Math. Optim. 17, 203-224 (1988; Zbl 0652.35043)]. We show that this initial boundary value problem has such a nonnegative generalized solution if and only if \(\int^\infty_0 ds/(1+f(s))= \infty\). \copyright Academic Press.