Preservation of support and positivity for solutions of degenerate evolution equations

We prove that sufficiently smooth solutions of equations of a certain class have two interesting properties. These evolution equations are in a sense degenerate, in that every term on the right-hand side of the evolution equation has either the unknown or its first spatial derivative as a factor. We first find a conserved quantity for the equation: the measure of the set on which the solution is non-zero. Second, we show that solutions which are initially non-negative remain non-negative for all times. These properties rely heavily upon the degeneracy of the leading order term. When the equation is more degenerate, we are able to prove that there are additional conserved quantities: the measure of the set on which the solution is positive and the measure of the set on which the solution is negative. To illustrate these results, we give examples of equations with nonlinear dispersion which have solutions in spaces with sufficient regularity to satisfy the hypotheses of the support and positivity theorems. An important family of equations with nonlinear dispersion are the Rosenau--Hyman compacton equations; there is no existence theory yet for these equations, but the known solutions of the compacton equations are of lower regularity than is needed for the preceding theorems. We prove an additional positivity theorem which applies to solutions of the same family of equations in a function space which includes some solutions of compacton equations.