Scalar conservation laws on constant and time-dependent Riemannian manifolds (Q1937366)

The authors consider a nonlinear scalar conservation law posed on a closed manifold \(M\) endowed with a constant or time-dependent Riemannian metric \(g\) on a given time interval \(I\). The conservation law in integral form has the form: \[ \frac{d}{dt}\int\limits_{K}udV+\int\limits_{\partial K}g(f(u),n_{\partial K})dV_{\partial K}=0 \;\;\text{in} \;\;I, \] where \(u:M\times I\to \mathbb{R}\) is the conserved quantity transported according to a flux function \(f=f(x,t,u)\) which has non-vanishing divergence. It is a family of vector fields on \(M\) parametrized by time \(t\) and by \(u\); \(K\subset M\) is smoothly bounded; \(dV\) and \(dV_{\partial K}\) are volume measures of \(M\) and \(\partial K\), respectively; \(n_{\partial K}\) is the outer unit normal to \(\partial K\). Applying the Gauss theorem to the conservation law stated above one obtains the following Cauchy problem: \[ \partial_tu+\lambda u+\text{div}f(u)=0 \;\;\text{in} \;\;M\times I \] under initial condition \(u(0)=u_0\) in \(M\). Here \(\lambda \) accounts for the rarefaction and compression due to the time-dependence of the metric. The main result is the existence and uniqueness of the solution in the space of measure-valued entropy solutions for initial \(L^{\infty }(M)\) data. Furthermore, the authors show that for every initial function \(u_0\in L^{\infty }(M)\cap BV(M)\) the unique entropy solution \(u\in L^{\infty }(M\times I)\) satisfies for almost all \(t\in I\) some estimate including the total variation of this solution, \[ TV_{g(t)}(u(t)) \leq e^{\int_{0}^{t}c_4(s)ds}TV_{g(0)}(u_0)+\int\limits_{0}^{t}c_5(s) e^{\int_{0}^{t}c_4(\tau )d\tau }ds. \]