Variational parabolic capacity (Q255554)

The authors study a capacity related to nonlinear parabolic partial differential equations and the principal prototype is the \(p\)-parabolic equation \[ \partial_t u - \mathrm{div }(| \nabla u|^{p-2}\nabla u) = 0, \] with \(p \geq 2\). The nonlinear parabolic capacity of a set \(E \subset \Omega_{\infty} = \Omega \times (0,\infty)\) is defined as \[ \mathrm{cap}(E,\Omega_{\infty}) = \sup\{\mu(\Omega_{\infty}\,:\, \mathrm{supp}\,\mu \subset E,\, 0 \leq u_{\mu} \leq 1\}, \] where \(\mu\) is a non-negative Radon measure, and \(u_{\mu}\) is a weak solution to the measure data problem \[ \partial_tu - \mathrm{div }(| \nabla u|^{p-2}\nabla u) = \mu, \quad \text{in } \Omega_{\infty} \] under \[ u(x,t) = 0, \quad \text{for } (x, t) \in \partial_p\Omega_{\infty}. \] The nonlinear parabolic capacity has many favorable features, including inner and outer regularity. The main motivation to study such a capacity is its applications to questions regarding boundary regularity and removability. The above capacity is analogous to thermal capacity \(p = 2\) related to the heat equation. However, computing the capacities of explicit sets using the above definition is quite challenging and the aim of this paper is to develop tools for estimating capacities of explicit sets in the nonlinear parabolic context. In analogy to the elliptic situation, a central role is played by the nonlinear parabolic variational capacity which in the case of a compact set \(K\) can be written as \[ \mathrm{cap}_{\mathrm{var}}(K,\Omega_{\infty}) = \{\|v\|_{W(\Omega_{\infty})}\,:\, v \in C_{0}^{\infty}(\Omega\times \mathbb{R}), v \geq \chi_{K}\} \] where \(\|v\|_{W(\Omega_{\infty})} = \|v\|^p_{\nu(\Omega_{\infty})} + \|\partial_tv\|^{p'}_{\nu(\Omega_{\infty})}\). Here \(W(\Omega_T) = \{u \in \nu(\Omega_T)\,:\, \partial_tu \in \nu(\Omega_T)\}\), \(\nu(\Omega_T) = L^p(0,W_0^{1,p}(\Omega))\) and \(\nu'(\Omega_T) = (L^p(0,W_0^{1,p}(\Omega)))'\). The main result of the paper shows that there exists a constant \(c \equiv c(n,p) > 1\) such that for any compact set \(K \subset \Omega_{\infty}\), \[ c^{-1}\mathrm{cap}_{\mathrm{var}}(K,\Omega_{\infty}) \leq \mathrm{cap}(K,\Omega_{\infty}) \leq c\,\mathrm{cap}_{\mathrm{var}}(K,\Omega_{\infty}). \] As an application, the authors estimate the capacities of space-time curves, cylinders and certain hyper-surfaces.