Blow-up of solutions to a degenerate parabolic equation not in divergence form (Q1405016)

The author studies the so-called blow-up phenomenon for solutions to the Dirichlet problem \[ \begin{gathered} u_t = u^p(\Delta u + u),\quad (x,t) \in \Omega\times (0,T),\\ \left. u\right|_{\partial\Omega} = 0,\quad \left. u\right|_{t = 0} = u_0, \end{gathered} \] where \(0 < p < 2\), \(\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^n\) is a smooth bounded domain and \(u_0\in C^0(\overline {\Omega})\) is a positive in \(\Omega\) and vanishes at \(\partial\Omega\). It is assumed that the principal eigenvalue \(\lambda_1(\Omega)\) of the Laplacian in \(\Omega\) is less than one. The author proves that the set of points at which \(u\) blows up has positive measure and the blow-up rate is exactly \((T - t)^{-1/p}\). The \(\omega\)-limit set of \((T - t)^{1/p}u(t)\) consists of continuous functions which solve \(\Delta w + w = (1/p)w^{1-p}\) in the case of \(n =1\) or \(p < 1\). In one space dimension it is shown that \((T - t)^{1/p}u(t) \to w\) as \(t\to T\), where \(w\) coincides with an element of a one-parameter family of functions inside each component of its positivity set. The rest of the article is devoted to studying the size of the components of \(\{w > 0\}\).