Parabolic Harnack estimates for anisotropic slow diffusion

Abstract

We prove a Harnack inequality for positive solutions of a parabolic equation with slow anisotropic spatial diffusion. After identifying its natural scalings, we reduce the problem to a Fokker-Planck equation and construct a self-similar Barenblatt solution. We exploit translation invariance to obtain positivity near the origin via a self-iteration method and deduce a sharp anisotropic expansion of positivity. This eventually yields a scale invariant Harnack inequality in an anisotropic geometry dictated by the speed of the diffusion coefficients. As a corollary, we infer H\"older continuity, an elliptic Harnack inequality and a Liouville theorem.