Radon measure-valued solutions of nonlinear strongly degenerate parabolic equations (Q406692)

The paper addresses Radon measured-valued solutions to the nonlinear strongly degenerate parabolic equation \[ u_t = \nabla\,\cdot [A(x,t,u)\nabla\,u] \qquad \text{in } Q = \Omega\times (0,T) \] under the homogeneous Dirichlet initial-boundary value problem \(u = 0\) on \(\partial\Omega\times (0,T)\) and \(u = u_0\) in \(\Omega\times\{0\}\). Here, \(\Omega \subset\mathbb R^N\), \(N\geq 2\) is a bounded domain with smooth boundary \(\partial\Omega\) and \(u_0\) is a finite Radon measure on \(\Omega\). The map \(A:Q\times\mathbb R \to\mathbb R^{N^2}\), \(A = A(x,t,u)\) is a bounded, symmetric Caratheodory matrix-valued function, satisfying the assumption that there exist positive constants \(\alpha\), \(\beta\) and \(\gamma\) such that \[ \frac{\alpha|\xi|^2}{(1 + | u|)^\gamma} \leq [A(x,t,u)\xi]\cdot\xi \leq \frac{\beta\xi^2}{(1 + | u|)^\gamma} \] for any \(\xi\in\mathbb R^N\), \(u\in\mathbb R\) and almost every \((x,t) \in Q\). The authors establish the existence of suitable defined weak Radon measure-valued solutions to the above-mentioned problem. Moreover, they prove that the so-called concentrated part of the solution with respect to the Newtonian capacity is constant and the total variation of the singular part of the solution (with respect to the Lebesgue measure) is nonincreasing in time. Conditions under which Radon measure-valued solutions of the problem are in fact function-valued (depending both on the initial data and on the strong of degeneracy) are also given.