Extinction behaviour for fast diffusion equations with absorption (Q5932178)

In the present article, the authors study the extinction behaviour of solutions \(u = u(x,t)\) to the Cauchy problem \[ u_t = (u^m)_{xx} - u^p,\quad x\in\mathbb R, t > 0,\qquad u(x,0) = u_0(x), \] which occurs in the range of exponents \(0 < m\), \(p < 1\), that has not been studied in the reaction-diffusion literature. It is supposed that functions \(u_0(x)\) are continuous as well as nonnegative and that \(u_0(x) \to 0\) as \(|x|\to\infty\) (other classes of initial data lead to a completely different asymptotic behaviour). The main aim of the article is to study the asymptotic behaviour of solutions to the Cauchy problem in the case of fast diffusion \(m < 1\) with singular absorption, which corresponds to \(p < 1\). The asymptotic question is to find the precise behaviour of \(u(x,t)\) as \(t\) approaches the extinction time. Existence of such finite time follows by comparison with the family of explicit solutions, called flat solution, \[ u(x,t) = [(1 -p)(T - t)_+]^{1/(1-p)},\quad T > 0. \] The question reads as following: Is the behaviour of solutions given by the so-called flat profile? The authors show that the answer is negative for a large class of initial data. The rest part of the article is devoted to an analysis of the existence of a self-similar solution and the \(\omega\)-limit set of the solutions under consideration.