Existence and non-existence of global solutions for a heat equation with degenerate coefficients

Abstract: In this paper, we will study the following parabolic problem $u_t - div(\omega(x) \nabla u)= h(t) f(u) + l(t) g(u)$ with non-negative initial conditions pertaining to $C_b(\mathbb{R}^N)$, where the weight $\omega$ is an appropriate function that belongs to the Munckenhoupt class $A_{1 + \frac{2}{N}}$ and the functions $f$, $g$, $h$ and $l$ are non-negative and continuous. The main goal is to establish of global and non-global existence of non-negative solutions. In addition, to present the particular case when $h(t) \sim t^r ~~ (r>-1)$, $l(t) \sim t^s ~~ (s>-1)$, $f(u) = u^p$ and $g(u)= (1+u)[\ln(1+u)]^p,$ we obtain both the so-called Fujita's exponent and the second critical exponent in the sense of Lee and Ni \cite{Lee-Ni}. Our results extend those obtained by Fujishima et al. \cite{Fujish} who worked when $h(t)=1$, $l(t)=0$ and $f(u)=u^p $.