Parabolic capacity and soft measures for nonlinear equations (Q1811022)

Let \(\Omega \) be a bounded, open subset of \(\mathbb{R}^N\), \(T\) a positive number and \(Q=[0,T]\times \Omega \). Let \(p\) be a real number, with \(1<p<\infty \), and let \(1/p+1/p'=1\). This paper deals with the parabolic initial-boundary value problem \(u_t+A(u)=\mu \) in \(Q\), \(u=0\) on \([0,T]\times \partial \Omega\), \(u(0)=u_0\) in \(\Omega \), where \(A\) is a nonlinear monotone and coercive operator in divergence form which acts from the space \(L^p(0,T;W_0^{1,p}(\Omega))\) into its dual \(L^{p'}(0,T; W^{-1,p'}(\Omega))\). The authors first introduced the notion of capacity related to the parabolic \(p\)-Laplace operator. Then they proved a decomposition theorem for measures that do not charge the sets with null capacity. Using these results they proved the following Theorem: Let \(\mu \) be a bounded real measure on \(Q\) which does not charge the subsets of \(Q\) of null capacity, and let \(u_0 \in L^1(\Omega)\). Then there is a unique renormalized solution \(u\) of the problem. Moreover, \(u\) satisfies the additional regularity: \(u\in L^\infty (0,T; L^1(\Omega))\) and \(\max (-k,\min (k,u)) \in L^p(0,T;W_0^{1,p}(\Omega))\) for every \(k>0\).