Gradient estimates for a nonlinear diffusion equation on complete manifolds

Let $(M,g)$ be a complete non-compact Riemannian manifold with the $m$-dimensional Bakry-\'{E}mery Ricci curvature bounded below by a non-positive constant. In this paper, we give a localized Hamilton-type gradient estimate for the positive smooth bounded solutions to the following nonlinear diffusion equation \[ u_t=\Delta u-\nabla\phi\cdot\nabla u-au\log u-bu, \] where $\phi$ is a $C^2$ function, and $a\neq0$ and $b$ are two real constants. This work generalizes the results of Souplet and Zhang (Bull. London Math. Soc., 38 (2006), pp. 1045-1053) and Wu (Preprint, 2008).