Attractor for a degenerate nonlinear diffusion problem with nonlinear boundary condition (Q1271029)

The authors study the following initial-boundary value problem: \[ u_t= \Delta\varphi(u)+ f(u)\quad\text{in }Q= \Omega\times (0,\infty),\tag{1} \] \[ {\partial\varphi(u)\over\partial n}= g(u)\quad\text{on }S= \partial\Omega\times [0,\infty),\quad u(x,0)= u_0(x)\quad\text{on }\Omega, \] where \(\Omega\subseteq \mathbb{R}^N\) is a smooth bounded domain. The data \(\varphi\), \(f\), \(g\) are subject to a number of growth conditions, referred to as (g.c) below, and which include the special case \(\varphi(r)=| r|^m\text{sgn}(r)\), \(m\geq 1\). The notion of smooth solution is introduced, corresponding essentially to classical solutions. For these, a number of a priori estimates are derived. The most difficult one states that under (g.c) and for \(u_0\in L^\infty(\Omega)\) there is \(C\) such that: \[ \| u\|_{L^\infty(\Omega)}\leq C,\quad C= C(u_0).\tag{2} \] The proof is rather involved and based on Moser techniques. As exhibited by (2), it turns out that \(L^\infty(\Omega)\) is the proper space on which to consider (1). In Section 3, weak solutions are introduced. A weak solution is a function \(u\) in \(C([0, T]; L^1(\Omega))\cap L^\infty(Q_T)\) with \(\varphi(u)\) in \(L^2([0, T]; H^1(\Omega))\) where \(Q_T= \Omega\times (0,T)\), which satisfies a certain integral identity derived from (1) with respect to a class of test functions \(\phi\) in \(L^2([0, T]; H^1(\Omega))\cap W^{1,1}([0, T]; L^1(\Omega))\), with \(\phi(T)= 0\). The principal Theorem 1 states that given \(u_0\) there exists a unique global weak solution subject to some inequalities such as (2) above. The existence is proved by a sequence of approximating problems. In the last section, the existence of a global attractor on \(L^\infty(\Omega)\) for weak solutions is proved.