Characterization of $F$-concavity preserved by the Dirichlet heat flow

Abstract

$F$-concavity is a generalization of power concavity and, actually, the largest available generalization of the notion of concavity. We characterize the $F$-concavities preserved by the Dirichlet heat flow in convex domains on ${\mathbb R}^n$, and complete the study of preservation of concavity properties by the Dirichlet heat flow, started by Brascamp and Lieb in 1976 and developed in some recent papers. More precisely: (1) we discover hot-concavity, which is the strongest $F$-concavity preserved by the Dirichlet heat flow; (2) we show that log-concavity is the weakest $F$-concavity preserved by the Dirichlet heat flow; quasi-concavity is also preserved only for $n=1$; (3) we prove that if $F$-concavity does not coincide with log-concavity and it is not stronger than log-concavity and $n\ge 2$, then there exists an $F$-concave initial datum such that the corresponding solution to the Dirichlet heat flow is not even quasi-concave, hence losing any reminiscence of concavity. Furthermore, we find a sufficient and necessary condition for $F$-concavity to be preserved by the Dirichlet heat flow. We also study the preservation of concavity properties by solutions of the Cauchy--Dirichlet problem for linear parabolic equations with variable coefficients and for nonlinear parabolic equations such as semilinear heat equations, the porous medium equation, and the parabolic $p$-Laplace equation.