Analysis of the free boundary for the \(p\)-parabolic variational problem \((p\geq 2)\) (Q1884104)

This paper deals with a variational inequality for a \(p\)-parabolic operator \[ \text{div}(|\nabla u(x)|^{p-2}\nabla u(x))- \partial_tu,\quad p\geq 2, \] the objective being to analyze the behavior of the solution near the free boundary and the regularity of the free boundary. Under monotonicity (in the time \(t)\) and positivity conditions on the data, the author shows that the free boundary is so-called ``porous'' (for each \(t\)-level cut). A consequence of porosity is that the \(t\)-cut of the free boundary has zero Lebesgue measure. The porosity of the free boundary follows as a by-product of the main result of the paper which states that the solution grows with a certain power away from the free boundary. The proof employs techniques of ``intrinsic scaling'', the main difficulty is due to the inhomogeneity of the \(p\)-parabolic operator.