Asymptotic behaviour of a nonlinear parabolic equation with gradient absorption and critical exponent (Q633943)

Summary: We study the large-time behaviour of solutions of the evolution equation involving nonlinear diffusion and gradient absorption, \[ \partial _t u - \Delta _p u + |\nabla u|^q = 0. \] We consider the problem for \(x\in\mathbb R^N \) and \(t>0\) with nonnegative and compactly supported initial data. We take the exponent \(p>2\) which corresponds to slow \(p\)-Laplacian diffusion. The main feature of the paper is that the exponent \(q\) takes the critical value \(q=p-1\) which leads to interesting asymptotics. This is due to the fact that in this case both the Hamilton-Jacobi term \(|\nabla u|^q\) and the diffusive term \(\Delta_p u\) have a similar size for large times. The study performed in this paper shows that a delicate asymptotic equilibrium happens so that the large-time behaviour of the solutions is described by a rescaled version of a suitable self-similar solution of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation \(|\nabla W|^{p-1}=W\), with logarithmic time corrections. The asymptotic rescaled profile is a kind of sandpile with a cusp on top, and it is independent of the space dimension.