Regularity of solutions for a two-phase degenerate Stefan problem (Q685798)

A degenerate Stefan problem differs from an ordinary Stefan problem in the fact that the ratio \(\alpha\) = specific heat/thermal conductivity in each phase is temperature dependent and vanishes at the phase change temperature, i.e. at the phase interface. However, for some reason which is not explained in the paper, the heat balance condition at the free boundary \(x=s(t)\), is written in the usual way, namely \(\dot s(t)=-[u_ x(s(t),t)]\pm \). The author proves that under some compatibility assumptions on the data the free boundary is a \(C^ \infty\) curve for \(t>0\). The proof is based on the use of the hodograph transformation \(\xi=u(x,t)\) on an iterative scheme for the estimation of the derivatives of any order of the quantity \(\int^ \beta_{-\beta} \alpha(\xi)v^ 2 (\xi,t)dx\), where \(v(\xi,t)=x\) is the inverse of the above transformation and \(\beta\) is a sufficiently small given constant.