Global solvability of the Cauchy-Dirichlet problem for nondiagonal parabolic systems with variational structure in the case of two spatial variables (Q1575975)

Consider the problem \[ \begin{aligned} u_t^k-(A_{kl}^{\alpha\beta}(x,u)u_{x_\beta}^l)_{x_\alpha}+b^k(x,u,u_x) &=0 \qquad\text{in }\Omega\times(0,T),\;\;k=1,\dots,N, \\ u &=\varphi \qquad\text{on }(\partial\Omega\times(0,T))\cup(\Omega\times\{0\}), \end{aligned} \] where \(\Omega\subset\mathbb R^2\) is a bounded domain with boundary of the class \(C^{2+\mu}\), \(A_{kl}^{\alpha\beta}=A_{lk}^{\beta\alpha}\in C^{1,2}(\bar\Omega\times\mathbb R^N)\) are uniformly elliptic, bounded, and with bounded first-order derivatives, \(b^m(x,u,p)=\break {1\over 2}[A_{kl}^{\alpha\beta}(x,u)]_{u^m}p_\beta^l p_\alpha^k\) and \(\varphi\in W^{1,2}_0(\Omega)\). The author proves existence of a global solution which is smooth in \(\bar\Omega\times(0,T]\) except for a finite singular set \(\Sigma\). Further regularity and uniqueness properties of this solution are derived and the singular points in \(\Sigma\) are characterized by means of local energy. The asymptotic behavior of the solution as \(t\to\infty\) and the case \(\varphi\neq 0\) on \(\partial\Omega\) are studied as well.