On an over-determined problem of free boundary of a degenerate parabolic equation. (Q2249857)

It is well known that, for \(m>1\) and \(p>0\), non-negative solutions to the porous medium equation with absorption \[ \partial_t u - \Delta u^m + \kappa u^p = 0 \;\;\text{ in }\;\; (0,\infty )\times \mathbb {R}^N, \] with compactly supported and bounded non-negative initial data \(u_0\) are compactly supported for all positive times. Here, \(\kappa \) is a positive real number. Given a solution \(u\), the author studies the time evolution of the positivity set \(H_u(t)\) of \(u\) at time \(t>0\) defined by \(H_u(t) =\{ x\in \mathbb {R}^N\: u(t,x)>0\}\). It is shown that, given \(K>0\), \(L>0\) and \(T_0>0\), there is a constant \(C_0(K,L,T_0)>0\) such that \(\mathbb {R}^N\setminus B(0,K) \cap H_u(T_0) \neq \emptyset \) provided \(\| u_0\|_1\geq C_0(K,L,T_0)\), \(\| u_0\|_\infty \leq L\), and \(m>p\geq 1\). A central tool in the proof is a pointwise lower bound for \(\partial_t u\) that generalizes the well-known one for the porous medium equation without absorption (\(\kappa =0\)).