The free boundary of a thermal wave in a strongly absorbing medium (Q1968701)

In dimension \(n\geq 2\), the author obtains regularity of the free boundary \(\partial \{u>0\}\) \((\{u>0\}:=\{x\in \Omega:\;u(x)>0\})\) of nonnegative solutions of the heat equation with strong absorption \[ \partial _tu-\Delta u=-\frac{1+\gamma}{2}u^{\gamma},\quad \gamma\in (0,1), \] where \(\Omega\subset {\mathbb R}^n\) is a bounded domain with \(C^{2,\sigma} \) boundary for some \(\sigma\in (0,1)\). The approach in this article is motivated by studies of Lyapunov's stability and by results concerning the Plateau problem. The author first proves an epiperimetric inequality for the class of half-plane solutions \(H=\{x\mapsto ((1-\gamma)/2\;\max (x\cdot v,0))^{2/(1-\gamma)}:\;v\in\partial B_1(0)\}\) and the boundary-adjusted energy \[ M(v)=\int_{B_1(0)}(|\Delta v|^2+\max(v,0)^{1+\gamma})-\frac{2}{1- \gamma}\int_{\partial B_1(0)}v^2d{\mathcal H}^{n-1}. \] \(M(v)\) plays the role of a Lyapunov function. Its scaled version \[ \begin{aligned} \Phi_{t_0,x_0}(r)=&r^{-n-2(1+\gamma)/(1-\gamma)}\int_{B_r(x_0)} (|\Delta u(t_0,\cdot)|^2+\max (u(t_0,\cdot),0)^{1+\gamma})\\ &-\frac{2}{1-\gamma}r^{-n+1-4/(1-\gamma)}\int_{\partial B_r(x_0)} u(t_0,\cdot)^2d{\mathcal H}^{n-1},\end{aligned} \] satisfies a monotonicity formula: \(r\mapsto \overline Cr^{\beta}+\Phi _{(t_0,x_0)}(r)\) is nondeceasing for any \((t_0,x_0)\in\partial \{u>0\}\) at which \(|\partial (u^{1-\gamma})|\) is Hölder-continuous. In the above, \(B_r(x_0)\) denotes the open \(n\)-dimenional ball with center \(x_0\) and radius \(r\); \(\overline C\) and \(\beta\) are constants; \({\mathcal H}^{m}\) is the the \(m\)-dimensional Hausdorff measure. The epiperimetric inequality leads to a differential inequality which implies Hölder continuity of \(r\mapsto \Phi_{(t_0,x_0)}(r)\) and a convergence estimate for \(u(t_0,x_0+r\cdot)/r^{2/(1-\gamma)}\) to the unique blow-up limit \(u_0\). At last, by topological methods, the author derives the relative openness and \(C^{\frac{1}{2},1+\mu}\)-regularity of the set \(R=\{(t,x)\in ((0,\infty) \times {\mathbb R}^n)\bigcap \partial\{u>0\}\}\).