Blow-down and immediate onset of positivity in the Neumann problem for (super-)fast diffusion equations

For the degenerate parabolic equation $u_t=\mathrm{\nabla }\cdot (u^{m-1}\mathrm{\nabla }u)$, the homogeneous Neumann problem in smoothly bounded domains $\mathrm{\Omega }\subset {\mathbb{R}}^n$ is considered in the (super-fast) diffusion range when $m\in (-\mathrm{\infty },1)$. Upper and lower estimates for solutions are inferred by means of two Moser-type iterations, and optimality properties of these bounds are derived using comparison arguments. On the basis of the accordingly obtained information on regularization into spaces of bounded and uniformly positive functions, a result on global solvability in an associated initial-boundary value problem is achieved for all nonnegative and nontrivial initial data belonging to $L^1(\mathrm{\Omega })\cap {\bigcup }_{s>n(1-m)\mathrm{/}2}{L}^s(\mathrm{\Omega })$.