We study the realization $A$ of the operator $\mathcal{A}=\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{△}-(DU,D\cdot )$ in $L^2\left(\mathrm{\Omega },\mu \right)$, where $\mathrm{\Omega }$ is a possibly unbounded convex open set in ${\mathbb{R}}^N$, $U$ is a convex unbounded function such that ${lim}_{x\to \partial \mathrm{\Omega },x\in \mathrm{\Omega }}U\left(x\right)=+\mathrm{\infty }$ and ${lim}_{\left|x\right|\to +\mathrm{\infty },x\in \mathrm{\Omega }}U\left(x\right)=+\mathrm{\infty }$, $DU\left(x\right)$ is the element with minimal norm in the subdifferential of $U$ at $x$, and $\mu \left(dx\right)=c\exp \left(-2U\left(x\right)\right)dx$ is a probability measure, infinitesimally invariant for $\mathcal{A}$. We show that $A$, with domain $D\left(A\right)=\left\{u\in H^2\left(\mathrm{\Omega },\mu \right):\left(DU,Du\right)\in L^2\left(\mathrm{\Omega },\mu \right)\right\}$ is a dissipative self-adjoint operator in $L^2\left(\mathrm{\Omega },\mu \right)$. Note that the functions in the domain of $A$ do not satisfy any particular boundary condition. Log-Sobolev and Poincaré inequalities...

We study the large time asymptotic behavior of solutions of the doubly degenerate parabolic equation $u_t=\mathrm{div}(u^{m-1}{\left|Du\right|}^{p-2}Du)-u^q$ with an initial condition $u(x,0)=u_0\left(x\right)$. Here the exponents $m$, $p$ and $q$ satisfy $m+p\ge 3$, $p>1$ and $q>m+p-2$.

Let $\Omega$ be a bounded open subset of ${ℝ}^n$, $n>2$. In $\Omega$ we deduce the global differentiability result $$u\in H^2(\Omega ,{ℝ}^N)$$ for the solutions $u\in H^1(\Omega ,{ℝ}^n)$ of the Dirichlet problem $$u-g\in H_0^1(\Omega ,{ℝ}^N),-\sum _i{D}_i{a}^i(x,u,Du)=B_0(x,u,Du)$$ with controlled growth and nonlinearity $q=2$. The result was obtained by first extending the interior differentiability result near the boundary and then proving the global differentiability result making use of a covering procedure.

The Picone-type identity for the half-linear second order partial differential equation $$\sum _{i=1}^n\frac{\partial }{\partial x_i}\Phi \left(\frac{\partial u}{\partial x_i}\right)+c\left(x\right)\Phi \left(u\right)=0,\Phi \left(u\right):={\left|u\right|}^{p-2}u,p>1,$$ is established and some applications of this identity are suggested.