Parabolic BMO and the forward-in-time maximal operator (Q1756418)

The functions of bounded mean oscillation (BMO), introduced by John and Nirenberg, are useful for elliptic partial differential equations. The corresponding concept, designed for parabolic partial differential equations, is complicated. The parabolic BMO-space PBMO$^-$, introduced in the present paper, is suitable for Trudinger's equation \[{\partial(|u|^{p-2}u)}{\partial t}=\nabla\cdot(|\nabla u|^{p-2}\nabla u),\quad 1<p<\infty.\] Also, a ``forward-in-time maximal operator'' is constructed, generalizing the classical Hardy-Littlewood maximal operator to a time dependent situation. The main result (Lemma 4.1) valid for nonnegative functions states that this maximal operator is bounded in PBMO$^-$.\par The proofs require clever covering arguments. The one-dimensional case is studied in detail.