Short time behaviour of a singular solution to the heat equation with absorption

Abstract

SynopsisThe paper considers the small time evolution of the interface which appears in the boundary value problemA diffusion dominated small time outer expansion is not uniformly valid when x = O(t½ log t) and has to be supplemented by an inner expansion valid in a region where diffusion and absorption are of equal importance. For p < 1 a zero order inner solution is constructed, which is consistent with a moving interface where u is zero, and the small time development of this is given.These results are first derived in a heuristic way using the method of matched expansions. However, an important aim of the paper is to give rigorous proofs, being one of the very few cases in nonlinear diffusion where this has been done.