Single point gradient blow-up on the boundary for a Hamilton-Jacobi equation with $p$-Laplacian diffusion

Abstract: We study the initial-boundary value problem for the Hamilton-Jacobi equation with nonlinear diffusion $u_t=\Delta_p u+|\nabla u|^q$ in a two-dimensional domain for $q>p>2$. It is known that the spatial derivative of solutions may become unbounded in finite time while the solutions themselves remain bounded. We show that, for suitably localized and monotone initial data, the gradient blow-up occurs at a single point of the boundary. Such a result was known up to now only in the case of linear diffusion ($p=2$). The analysis in the case $p>2$ is considerably more delicate.