A comparison principle for singular diffusion equations with spatially inhomogeneous driving force for graphs (Q2436332)

In this paper, the authors study a degenerate nonlinear parabolic equation in one space dimension, whose diffusion effect is very strong at particular slopes of unknown functions. Particularly, they are interested in an equation where the driving force term is spatially inhomogenuous, giving as an example the quasilinear equation \[ u_{t}=a(u_{x})[W'(u_{x})_{x}+\sigma(t,x)],\tag{1} \] where \(W\) is a given convex function on \(\mathbb R\) which may not be of class \(C^1\) so that its derivative \(W'\) may have jump discontinuities. The function is non-negative continuous, and \(\sigma\) is a given smooth function depending on \(x\) and also on \(t\). The authors set as an eventual goal to establish a kind of the theory of viscosity solutions for a class of equations including (1) as a particular example so that they will be able to construct a global-in-time solution, for periodic initial data. Thus, they give a new notion of viscosity solutions of (1) and establish a comparison principle.