Sharp power concavity of two relevant free boundary problems of reaction-diffusion type

Abstract

The porous medium type reaction-diffusion equation and the Hele-Shaw problem are two free boundary problems linked through the incompressible (Hele-Shaw) limit. We investigate and compare the sharp power concavities of the pressures on their respective supports for the two free boundary problems. For the pressure of the porous medium type reaction-diffusion equation, the $\frac{1}{2}$-concavity preserves all the time, while $\alpha$-concavity for $\alpha \in [0,\frac{1}{2})\cup (\frac{1}{2},1]$ does not persist in time. In contrast, in the case of the pressure for the Hele-Shaw problem, $\alpha$-concavity with $\alpha \in [0,\frac{1}{2}]$ is maintained all the while and $\frac{1}{2}$ acts as the largest index. The intuitive explanation for the difference between the two free boundary problems is that, although the Hele-Shaw problem is the incompressible limit of the porous medium-type reaction-diffusion equation, it is no longer a degenerate parabolic equation. Furthermore, for the pressure of the porous medium type reaction-diffusion equation, the non-degenerate estimate is established by means of the derived concave properties, indicating that the spatial Lipschitz regularity in the whole space is sharp.