The porous medium equation with large data on Cartan-Hadamard manifolds under general curvature bounds

Abstract: We consider very weak solutions of the Cauchy problem for the porous medium equation on Cartan-Hadamard manifolds, that are assumed to satisfy general curvature bounds and to be stochastically complete. We identify a class of initial data that can grow at infinity at a prescribed rate, which depends on the assumed curvature bounds through an integral function, such that the corresponding solution exists at least on $[0,T]$ for a suitable $T>0$. The maximal existence time $T$ is estimated in terms of a suitable weighted norm of the initial datum. Our results are sharp, in the sense that slower growth rates yield global existence, whereas one can construct data with critical growth for which the corresponding solutions blow up in finite time. Under further assumptions, uniqueness of very weak solutions is also proved, in the same growth class.