Renormalized solutions to the continuity equation with an integrable damping term (Q745571)

The authors consider the Cauchy problem for the continuity equation \[ \begin{cases} u_t (t,x) + \nabla \cdot (b(t,x) u(t,x))=c(t,x) u(t,x), \quad (t,x) \in (0,T) \times \mathbb R^d \\ u(0,x)=u_0 (x), \quad x \in \mathbb R^d, \end{cases} \] where \(u\in \mathbb R, b \in \mathbb R^d\) and \(c \in \mathbb R\). Let \(X: [0,T]\times \mathbb R^d \rightarrow \mathbb R^d\) be the flow of \(b\), i.e. the solution to the ODE \[ \begin{cases} \partial_t X (t,x) = b(t, X(t,x)) \quad t \in (0,T)\\ X(0,x)=x.\end{cases} \] Then, the main result of the paper reads as follows: ``Let \(b \in L^1 ((0,T); BV_{\mathrm{loc}}(\mathbb R^d; \mathbb R^d))\) be a vector field that satisfies a bound on the divergence \( \nabla \cdot b \in L^1 ((0,T);L^{\infty}(\mathbb R^d))\) and the growth condition \[ \frac{|b(x)|}{1+|x|} \in L^1((0,T);L^1(\mathbb R^d)) + L^1((0,T);L^{\infty}(\mathbb R^d)). \] Let \(c \in L^1((0,T)\times \mathbb R^d)\) and let \(u_0:\mathbb R^d \rightarrow \mathbb R\) be a measurable function. Then there exists a unique renormalized solution of the continuity equation and it is given by the formula \[ u(t,x)= \frac{u_0 (X^{-1}(t,\cdot)(x))}{J X(t, X^{-1}(t,\cdot)(x))} \exp \left(\int_0^t c(\tau,X(\tau, X^{-1}(t,\cdot)(x))) d \tau \right)." \] The proof is devided into two parts. The crucial role in the proof of the existence plays the lemma about the properties of the Jacobian \(JX\). The authors use the results of DiPerna-Lions and Ambrosio about the existence of a unique regular Lagrangian flow \(X\) of \(b\). In order to show the uniqueness they need to prove the technical lemma about the properties of the function \(\arctan\) and the fact that the difference of two renormalized solutions with the same initial datum is a renormalized solution with initial datum 0.