Well-posedness of a parabolic moving-boundary problem in the setting of Wasserstein gradient flows (Q5962413)

The authors propose a new weak formulation for a parabolic moving-boundary problem of kinetic type, which arises in the context of dissolution and precipitation of salts in porous media. The model equations are cast in the form of Wasserstein gradient flows. Besides proving the existence of a suitable class of solutions, a new uniqueness technique [based on the framework of gradient flows with respect to the Wasserstein metric] is also developed. The working approach seems to be intrinsically natural. The authors mention in passing that ``from a modeling point of view, the additional structure provided by the gradient flow has the effect of characterizing the system: once both the energy and the dissipation metric have been chosen, the choices fully determine the system\dots the energy and the metric together clearly show the modeling choices that lie at the basis of the equations''.