Blow-up and global existence for solutions to the porous medium equation with reaction and fast decaying density

Abstract

We are concerned with nonnegative solutions to the Cauchy problem for the porous medium equation with a variable density $\rho(x)$ and a power-like reaction term $u^p$ with $p>1$. The density decays {\it fast} at infinity, in the sense that $\rho(x)\sim |x|^{-q}$ as $|x|\to +\infty$ with $q\ge 2.$ In the case when $q=2$, if $p$ is bigger than $m$, we show that, for large enough initial data, solutions blow-up in finite time and for small initial datum, solutions globally exist. On the other hand, in the case when $q>2$, we show that existence of global in time solutions always prevails. The case of {\it slowly} decaying density at infinity, i.e. $q\in [0,2)$, is examined in [41].