Finite speed of propagation and waiting times for the stochastic porous medium equation: A unifying approach

In this paper, we develop an energy method to study finite speed of propagation and waiting time phenomena for the stochastic porous media equation with linear multiplicative noise in up to three spatial dimensions. Based on a novel iteration technique and on stochastic counterparts of weighted integral estimates used in the deterministic setting, we formulate a sufficient criterion on the growth of initial data which locally guarantees a waiting time phenomenon to occur almost surely. Up to a logarithmic factor, this criterion coincides with the optimal criterion known from the deterministic setting. Our technique can be modified to prove finite speed of propagation as well.