Gradient estimates for a class of elliptic and parabolic equations on Riemannian manifolds

Abstract: Let $(N, g)$ be a complete noncompact Riemannian manifold with Ricci curvature bounded from below. In this paper, we study the gradient estimates of positive solutions to a class of nonlinear elliptic equations $$\Delta u(x)+a(x)u(x)\log u(x)+b(x)u(x)=0$$ on $N$ where $a(x)$ is $C^{2}$-smooth while $b(x)$ is $C^{1}$ and its parabolic counterparts $$(\Delta-\frac{\partial}{\partial t})u(x,t)+a(x,t)u(x,t)\log u(x,t) + b(x,t)u(x,t)=0$$ on $N\times[0, \infty)$ where $a(x,t)$ and $b(x,t)$ are $C^{2} $ with respect to $x\in N$ while are $C^{1}$ with respect to the time $t$. In contrast with lots of similar results, here we do not assume the coefficients of equations are constant, so our results can be viewed as extensions to several classical estimates.