Almost global strong solutions to quasilinear dissipative evolution equations (Q1044796)

The author considers the following Cauchy problem for the quasilinear dissipative hyperbolic evolution equation \[ \left\{\begin{aligned} &\varepsilon u_{tt}+u_t-\sum^N_{i,j=1}a_{ij}(\nabla u)\partial_i\partial_ju=f,\\ &u(0,x)=u_0(x),\quad u_t(0,x)=u_1(x),\end{aligned}\right.\tag{1} \] with \(\varepsilon\in (0,1]\), \(f=f(t,x)\), \(t\geq 0\), \(x\in\mathbb R^N\). The main result of the paper reads as follows. First, some suitable conditions on the coefficients \(a_{ij}\) (smoothness and a growth assumption, depending on some \(m\in\mathbb N\), symmetry and the uniformly strong ellipticity) are assumed. Given \(T>0\), \(f\in Z_{s+m}(T):=\{u\in L^2(0,T;H^{s+m}(\mathbb R^N))\;|\;\partial_t^{s+m}u\in L^2(0,T;L^2(\mathbb R^N))\}\), and \(u_0\in H^{s+1+m} (\mathbb R^N)\), \(u_1\in H^{s+m}(\mathbb R^N)\). Then, there exists \(\varepsilon_m\in (0,1]\) such that for all \(\varepsilon\in (0,\varepsilon_m]\), problem (1) admits a unique solution \(u\in \mathcal X_{s+m}(T):=\cap_{j=0}^{s+1+m} C^j([0,T];H^{s+1-j+m}(\mathbb R^N))\). The author starts from studying more regular solutions (\(m\geq 4\)) and then deals with the remaining cases \(0\leq m\leq 3\). The author also discusses relation between the global solvability of (1) and the global solvability of the corresponding (\(\varepsilon=0\)) Cauchy problem for the quasilinear parabolic equation \[ \left\{\begin{aligned} &u_t-\sum^N_{i,j=1}a_{ij}(\nabla u)\partial_i\partial_ju=g,\\ &u(0,x)=v_0(x).\end{aligned}\right.\tag{2} \] In particular, some a priori estimates of the solution with respect to initial data for problem (2) are obtained.