A kinetic approach to nonlinear degenerate parabolic equations (Q1321766)

The paper is concerned with the Cauchy problem for a nonlinear parabolic equation of the form \[ u_ t + \nabla A(u) = \Delta \beta (u); \quad (x,t) \in \mathbb{R}^ N \times (0, \infty); \quad u(x,0) = u_ 0(x). \] The derivative \(\beta'\) may have a countable set of zero points, so the parabolicity of the above equation degenerates at those points. The problem can be also interpreted physically as a linear combination of the quasilinear first-order hyperbolic conservation laws and the porous medium equations. This enables the author to apply the so-called kinetic approach consisting in formulating an associated linear Boltzmann equation, so that the macroscopic quantity \(u(x,t)\) can be represented by a microscopic quantity in the phase space using an appropriate kernel function. By means of the nonlinear semigroup theory, the author establishes the main result: the Cauchy problem under consideration has a unique BV solution.