The supercooled Stefan problem: fractal freezing and the fine structure of maximal solutions

Abstract: We study the supercooled Stefan problem in arbitrary dimensions. First, we study general solutions and their irregularities, showing generic fractal freezing and nucleation, based on a novel Markovian gluing principle. In contrast, we then establish regularity properties of maximal solutions, which are obtained by maximizing a suitable notion of "average" freezing time. Unexpectedly, we show that maximal solutions have a transition zone that is open modulo a low-dimensional set: this allows us to apply obstacle problem theory for a finer regularity analysis. We further show that maximal solutions are in general non-universal, and we obtain sharp stability results under perturbation of each maximal solution. Lastly, we study maximal solutions in both the radial and the one-dimensional setting. We show that in these cases the maximal solution is universal and minimizes nucleation, in agreement with phenomena observed in the physics literature.