Sharp regularity for the inhomogeneous porous medium equation

Abstract

We show that locally bounded solutions of the inhomogeneous porous medium equation $$u_{t} - {\rm div} \left( m |u|^{m-1} \nabla u \right) = f \in L^{q,r}, \quad m >1 ,$$ are locally H\"older continuous, with exponent $$\gamma =\min \left\{ \frac{\alpha_{0}^-}{m}, \frac{[(2q - n)r -2q]}{q[(mr - (m-1)]} \right\},$$ where $\alpha_{0}$ denotes the optimal H\"older exponent for solutions of the homogeneous case. The proof relies on an approximation lemma and geometric iteration in the appropriate intrinsic scaling.