Scale-invariant extinction time estimates for some singular diffusion equations (Q541552)

The authors study three singular parabolic PDE's: the second-order total variation flow \(u_t=\text{div}\,(\nabla u/|\nabla u|)\), the fourth-order total variation flow \(u_t=-\Delta[\text{div}(\nabla u/|\nabla u|)]\) and the fourth-order surface diffusion law \(u_t=-\Delta[\text{div}((\nabla u/|\nabla u|)+\mu|\nabla u|^{q-2}\nabla u)]\) with spatially periodic setting. They prove finite-time extinction of the solutions. They also obtain scale-invariant estimates for the extinction time using a simple argument which combines an energy estimate with a suitable Sobolev-type inequality.