On two coupled degenerate parabolic equations motivated by thermodynamics

Abstract: We propose a system of two coupled parabolic equations that have degenerate diffusion constants depending on the energy-like variable. The dissipation of the velocity-like variable is fed as a source term into the energy equation leading to conservation of the total energy. Because of the degeneracies there are solutions with nontrivial support that may grow in time like in the porous medium equation, which is contained in our system as a special case. The motion of the free boundary may be driven by either self-diffusion of the energy-like variable or by dissipation of the velocity-like variable. We discuss the cross-over of these two phenomena in terms of the associated planar traveling waves. Moreover, we provide existence of suitably defined weak and very weak solutions. After providing a thermodynamically motivated gradient structure we also establish convergence into steady state for bounded domains.