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Two Remarks on the Local Behavior of Solutions to Logarithmically Singular Diffusion Equations and its Porous-Medium Type Approximations

For the logarithmically singular parabolic equation \[ u_t-Δ\ln u=0\qquad\text{weakly in}\ \ E\times(0,T], \] we establish a Harnack type estimate in the $L^1_{loc}$ topology, and we show that the solutions are locally analytic in the space variables and differentiable in time. The main assumption is that $\ln u$ possesses a sufficiently high degree of integrability, namely \begin{equation*} \ln u\in L^\infty_{loc}\big(0,T;L^p_{loc}(E)\big) \quad\text{for some} p\ge1. \end{equation*} These two properties are known for solutions of singular porous medium type equations ($0<m<1$), which formally approximate the logarithmically singular equation. However, the corresponding estimates deteriorate as $m\to0$. It is shown that these estimates become stable and carry to the limit as $m\to0$, provided the indicated sufficiently high order of integrability is in force. The latter then appears as the discriminating assumption between solutions of parabolic equations with power-like singularities and logarithmic singularities to insure such solutions to be regular.