Diffuse measures and nonlinear parabolic equations (Q409212)

This paper studies the interplay between diffuse measures and semilinear parabolic equations. More precisely, the authors consider the problem \[ (\star) \quad u_t-\Delta_p u+h(u)=\mu\text{ in } Q=(0,T)\times \Omega, \;\;u=u_0 \text{ in } \{0\}\times \Omega\text{ and } u=0 \text{ on } (0,T)\times \partial \Omega. \] Here \(\Omega\subset \mathbb R^N\) is a bounded domain, \(T>0\) and \(\mu\) belongs to \(M(Q)\), the vector space of all a finite Radon measures in \(Q\). A measure \(\mu\) is said to be diffuse if does not charge sets of \(p\)-parabolic capacity. The first result of the paper establishes an approximation property in the class \(M_0(Q)\) of all diffuse measures on \(Q\). More precisely, for all \(\mu\in M_0(Q)\) and any \(\varepsilon >0\) there exists \(\nu \in M_0(Q)\) and \(w\in L^p(0,T; W_0^{1,p}(\Omega))\cap L^\infty(Q)\) such that \[ \|\mu-\nu\|_{M(Q)}\leq \varepsilon\quad\text{ and }\quad \nu=w_t-\Delta_p w\text{ in }D'(Q). \] Next the authors establish a capacitary estimate for the level sets of solutions to \((\star)\) with \(h\equiv 0\). More exactly, it is shown that if \(\mu\in M(Q)\cap L^{p'}(0,T; W^{-1,p'}(\Omega))\), \(u_0\in L^2(\Omega)\) and \(u\) is the unique solution of \((\star)\) with \(h\equiv 0\) then for all \(k\geq 1\) holds \[ \mathrm {cap}_p[|u|>k]\leq C\max\{k^{-1/p},k^{-1/p'}\}. \] The third main result of the paper can be stated as follows: if \(\mu\in M_0(Q)\), \(u_0\in L^1(\Omega)\), and \(h\) satisfies \(h(s)s\geq 0\) for large \(|s|\), then problem \((\star)\) admits a renormalized solution. Furthermore, the renormalized solution is unique if \(h\) is nondecreasing.