A note on the classical weak and strong maximum principles for linear parabolic partial differential inequalities (Q493613)

In this paper, the authors consider the following parabolic partial differential inequalities \[ u_{t}-au_{xx}-bu_{x}-cu\leq 0 \, \text{on}\, \Omega \times(0,T], \] where u is a sufficiently smooth function defined on \(\Omega \times(0,T], \Omega\subset \mathbb{R}\) is a bounded open interval, \(T>0\), and \(a,b,c: \Omega \times (0,T]\to \mathbb{R}\) are prescribed functions, with a being nonnegative. The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate that the condition on \(c: \Omega \times(0,T]\to \mathbb{R}\) in the classical strong maximum principle (CSMP), that \(c\) is bounded above and locally bounded below on \(\Omega \times(0,T]\), cannot be relaxed to c being bounded above, as in the condition on \(c\) in the classical week maximum principle (CWMP). Moreover, the authors demonstrate that a nontrivial function \(u\) satisfying the conditions of CSMP does not necessarily have positive outward directional derivative at certain points on the boundary of the domain (if they exist) where \(u\) obtains a global maxima. The conclusions are obtained via the construction of a specific function which provides a solution to a specific linear parabolic partial differential inequality (Section 3).