Asymptotic spherical symmetry of the free boundary in degenerate diffusion equations

Summary A general class of nonlinear degenerate parabolic equations in many space dimensions is considered and two main results concerning the free boundary are proved: (i) the «eventual» Lipschitz continuity in the space variable, (ii) the asymptotic spherical symmetry in a stronger sense than the «almost radiality» proved by Aronson & Caffarelli [2] for the porous medium equation. The proofs make use of geometric ideas based on the comparison principle and the method of moving planes.