Lower semicontinuous obstacles for the porous medium equation (Q2423232)

The paper deals with the obstacle problem for the porous medium equation \[ \partial_t-\Delta u^m=0\quad \text{in}\ \Omega_T \] in the slow diffusion regime $m>1,$ where $\Omega_T=\Omega\times(0,T)$ with a bounded open set $\Omega\subset\mathbb{R}^n.$ The authors consider irregular obstacles that are only bounded and lower semicontinuous. Existence of solution is proved in the sense of the minimal supersolution lying above the obstacle. As a consequence, it is also shown that the non-negative weak supersolutions to the porous medium equation can be approximated by a sequence of supersolutions which are bounded away from zero.