A strong maximum principle for nonlinear nonlocal diffusion equations

This is a study of a class of nonlocal nonlinear diffusion equations. We present a strong maximum principle for nonlocal time-dependent Dirichlet problems. Results are for bounded functions of space, rather than (semi)-continuous functions. Solutions that attain interior global extrema must be identically trivial. However, depending on the nonlinearity, trivial solutions may not be constant in space; they may have an infinite number of discontinuities, for example. We give examples of nonconstant trivial solutions for different nonlinearities. For porous medium-type equations, these functions do not solve the associated classical differential equations, even those in weak form. We also show that these problems are globally wellposed for Lipschitz, nonnegative diffusion coefficients.

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