Global existence and blow-up of solutions to the porous medium equation with reaction and singular coefficients

Abstract: We study global in time existence versus blow-up in finite time of solutions to the Cauchy problem for the porous medium equation with a variable density $\rho(x)$ and a power-like reaction term posed in the one dimensional interval $(-R,R)$, $R>0$. Here the weight function is singular at the boundary of the domain $(-R,R)$, indeed it is such that $\rho(x)\sim (R-|x|)^{-q}$ as $|x|\to R$, with $q\ge0$. We show a different behavior of solutions depending on the three cases when $q>2$, $q=2$ and $q<2$.