\(\Sigma\) -convergence of nonlinear parabolic operators (Q866536)

The authors study the limit behaviour as \(\varepsilon \to 0^+\) of the family of parabolic equations \[ \begin{aligned} {\displaystyle \frac{\partial u}{\partial t}} - \text{div} \, a \Big({\displaystyle \frac{x}{\varepsilon}}, {\displaystyle \frac{t}{\varepsilon^k}}, Du\Big) = f & \quad\text{in } \Omega \times (0,T), \\ u = 0 & \quad\text{on }\partial\Omega \times (0,T), \\ u = 0 & \quad\text{in } \Omega \times \{0\} \end{aligned} \] with standard assumptions of \(p\)-growth on \(a\), \(p \geqslant 2\), \(k > 0\), \(\Omega\) open bounded set, \(T > 0\). The novelty contained in the paper is that \(a\) is not assumed to be necessarily periodic in the first two variables, but an abstract assumption on \(a(\cdot, \cdot, \xi)\) is made (for \(\xi \in {\mathbb R}^n\) fixed). This condition covers many behaviours, among them the periodic and the almost periodic cases. The approach used is that of \(\Sigma\)-convergence, derived from two-scale convergence, which is also used by the authors in a recent paper to study the same problem with \(k=1\).