Hölder estimates for parabolic \(p(x, t)\)-Laplacian systems (Q1938414)

The authors study regularity properties for the spatial gradient of solutions to the parabolic \(p(x,t)\)-Laplacian system \[ \partial_t u - \text{div}\left(a(x,t)|Du|^{p(x,t) - 2}Du\right) = 0 \quad \text{in } \Omega_T, \] where \(\Omega_T = \Omega \times (0,T)\), \(\Omega\) is a bounded domain of \(\mathbb R^n\), \(n \geq 2\). The exponent function \(p\,:\, \Omega_T \to (2n/(n+2),\infty)\) is assumed to be continuous with a modulus of continuity \(\omega\) which is a concave, non-decreasing function with \(\omega(0) = 0\). It is proven that for a weak solution \(u\) of the parabolic system under consideration there exists a Hölder exponent \(\alpha \in (0,1)\) such that \[ u \in C^{0;1,1/2}_{\text{loc}}(\Omega_T,\mathbb R^n) \quad \text{and } Du \in C^{0;\alpha,\alpha/2}_{\text{loc}}(\Omega_T,\mathbb R^n) \] provided suitable conditions on \(p(x,t)\) and \(a(x,t)\) which are Hölder continuous functions.