Quasi-linear parabolic equations with degenerate coercivity having a quadratic gradient term (Q2490961)

The authors prove existence and regularity of distributional solutions of the problem \[ u_t-\text{div}(\mathbf{a}(x,t,u)\nabla u)=b(x,t,u,\nabla u)+f, \qquad x\in\Omega,\;t\in(0,T), \] complemented by homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions and the initial condition \(u(\cdot,0)=u_0\). Here \(\Omega\) is a bounded domain in \(\mathbb R^N\), \(\mathbf{a}(x,t,u)\) behaves like \(\alpha(u)I\) for some bounded continuous positive function \(\alpha\) (which may vanish at \(\pm\infty\) but \(\alpha\notin L^1(0,+\infty)\cup L^1(-\infty,0)\)), \(| b(x,t,u,\xi)| \leq\beta(u)| \xi| ^2\), where \(\beta\) is a continuous nonnegative function and the ratio \(\beta/\alpha\) satisfies some integrability condition. The right-hand side \(f\) belongs to \(L^r(0,T;L^q(\Omega))\) for some \(r>1\), \(q>N/2\), \(1/r+N/(2q)\leq1\), and the initial data satisfy the growth condition \(\int_\Omega\Phi(u_0)\,dx<\infty\), where \(\Phi\) is superlinear at infinity. The solution \(u\) is found by solving some approximating problems and proving suitable a priori estimates for the approximate solutions. If \(u_0\in L^\infty(\Omega)\) and \(1/r+N/(2q)<1\) then the solution \(u\) is bounded.