Matzoh ball soup revisited: the boundary regularity issue

Abstract

We consider nonlinear diffusion equations of the form $\partial_t u= \Delta \phi(u)$ in $\mathbb R^N$ with $N \ge 2.$ When $\phi(s) \equiv s$, this is just the heat equation. Let $\Omega$ be a domain in $\mathbb R^N$, where $\partial\Omega$ is bounded and $\partial\Omega = \partial (\mathbb R^N\setminus \bar {\Omega})$. We consider the initial-boundary value problem, where the initial value equals zero and the boundary value equals 1, and the Cauchy problem where the initial data is the characteristic function of the set $\Omega^c = \mathbb R^N\setminus \Omega$. We settle the boundary regularity issue for the characterization of the sphere as a stationary level surface of the solution $u:$ no regularity assumption is needed for $\partial\Omega.$