The Dirichlet problem associated to the relativistic heat equation (Q2268144)

The authors are interested in the Dirichlet problem associated to the relativistic heat equation \[ \begin{cases} \frac{\partial u}{\partial t}=v \operatorname{div}\left( \frac{uDu}{\sqrt{u^2+\frac{v^2}{c^2}|Du|^2}}\right), &\text{in }Q_T=(0,T) \times \Omega,\\ u=g, &\text{on }S_T= (0,T)\times \partial \Omega,\\ u(0,x)=u_0(x), &\text{in }\Omega,\end{cases} \tag{1} \] where \(\Omega \) is an open bounded subset of \(\mathbb R^N\) with Lipschitz boundary \(\partial \Omega \), \(0\leq u_0\in L^\infty(\Omega)\) and \(0\leq g\in L^\infty(\partial \Omega)\). To obtain existence and uniqueness of solutions of \(\left( 1\right) \), the authors consider the elliptic problem \[ \begin{cases} u-v \operatorname{div}\left( \frac{uDu}{\sqrt{u^2+\frac{v^2}{c^2} |Du|^2}}\right) =v, &x\in \Omega,\\ u(x)=g(x), &x\in \partial \Omega,\end{cases} \tag{2} \] when \(g\in L^\infty(\partial \Omega)^+\). They define a notion of entropy solution for it and prove an existence and uniqueness result when the right-hand side \(0\leq v\in L^\infty(\Omega)\). This permit to the authors to associate an accretive operator \(B_g\) in \(L^1(\Omega)\) whose domain is contained in \( L^\infty(\Omega)^+\) its closure is accretive in \(L^1(\Omega)\) and generates a nonlinear contraction semigroup \(S(t)\) in \(L^1(\Omega)\). The knowledge of the operator \(B_g\) and the fact that \(\|u\| _\infty\leq \max\{\|v\|_\infty ,\|g\|_\infty\}\), since \(u\) is the entropy solution of \((2)\), permit to the authors to use Crandall-Ligget's iteration scheme and define \[ u(t):=S(t)u_0=\lim_{n\rightarrow \infty } \bigg(1+\frac tnB_g\bigg)^{-n}\,u_0, \quad u_0\in L^\infty(\Omega)^+. \] The authors prove that \(u(t)\) is an entropy solution of (1) and the entropy solutions are unique.