The paper considers parabolic equations in non-divergent form with discontinuous coefficients at higher derivatives. Their investigation is most complicated because, in general, in the case of discontinuous coefficients, the uniqueness of a solution for nonlinear parabolic or elliptic equations can fail, and there is no a priory estimate for partial derivatives of a solution. In this paper, existence and regularity results are obtained under some Cordes type restrictions on the coefficients. The results are applied to diffusion processes.
In this paper, we obtain Cordes-Nirenberg type estimates for nonlocal parabolic equations on the more flexible solution space $L^{\iy}_T(L^1_{\om})$ than the classical solution space $\rB(\BR^n_T)$ consisting of all bounded functions on $\BR^n_T$.
We obtain Calderón-Zygmund type estimates for parabolic equations with Orlicz growth, where nonlinearities involved in the equations may be discontinuous for the space and time variables. In addition, we consider parabolic systems with the Uhlenbeck structure.
We consider an oblique derivative problem in a wedge for nondivergence parabolic equations with discontinuous in $t$ coefficients. We obtain weighted coercive estimates of solutions in anisotropic Sobolev spaces.
In this paper, we review some results over the last 10-15 years on elliptic and parabolic equations with discontinuous coefficients. We begin with an approach given by N. V. Krylov to parabolic equations in the whole space with VMO$_x$ coefficients. We then discuss some subsequent development including elliptic and parabolic equations with coefficients which are allowed to be merely measurable in one or two space directions, weighted $L_p$ estimates with Muckenhoupt ($A_p$) weights, non-local elliptic and parabolic equations, as well as fully nonlinear elliptic and parabolic equations.
We establish pointwise estimates for the Green function to the Dirichlet problem for parabolic equation with coefficients measurable in time variable. Using these estimate we obtain coercive estimates for this problem in anisotropic weighted Lebesgue spaces and prove the solvability theorems.
We prove the existence of a fundamental solution of the Cauchy initial boundary value problem on the whole space for a parabolic partial differential equation with discontinuous unbounded first-order coefficient at the origin. We establish also non-asymptotic, rapidly decreasing at infinity, upper and lower estimates for the fundamental solution. We extend the classical parametrix method provided by E.E. Levi.
We deal with the problem of determining a time varying inclusion within a thermal conductor. In particular we study the continuous dependance of the inclusion from the Dirichlet-to-Neumann map. Under a priori regularity assumptions on the unknown defect we establish logarithmic stability estimates.
We consider the Dirichlet problem in a wedge for parabolic equation whose coefficients are measurable function of t. We obtain coercive estimates in weighted $L_{p,q}$-spaces. The concept of "critical exponent" introduced in the paper plays here the crucial role. Various important properties of the critical exponent are proved. We give applications to the Dirichlet problem for linear and quasi-linear non-divergence parabolic equations with discontinuous in time coefficients in cylinders $Ω\times(0,T)$, where $Ω$ is a bounded domain with an edge or with a conical point.
We consider an oblique derivative problem for non-divergence parabolic equations with discontinuous in $t$ coefficients in a half-space. We obtain weighted coercive estimates of solutions in anisotropic Sobolev spaces. We also give an application of this result to linear parabolic equations in a bounded domain. In particular, if the boundary is of class ${\cal C}^{1,δ}$, $δ\in (0,1]$, then we present a coercive estimate of solutions in weighted anisotropic Sobolev spaces, where the weight is a power of the distance to the boundary.
This article studies the partial Hölder continuity of weak solutions to certain degenerate parabolic systems whose model is the differentiable parabolic $p(x,t)$-Laplacian system, \begin{equation*}\partial_t u-\operatorname{div}[μ(z)(1+|Du|^2)^{\frac{p(z)-2}{2}}Du]=0,\qquad p(z)\geq2.\end{equation*} Here, the exponential function $p(z)$ satisfies a logarithmic continuity condition. We show that if $μ(z)$ satisfies a certain VMO-type condition, then $u$ is locally Hölder continuous except for a measure zero set.
We prove in this short report the existence of a fundamental solution (F.S.) for the Cauchy initial boundary problem on the whole space for the parabolic differential equation having at origin the point of non-integrable unbounded discontinuity for coefficient before a first order derivative. We give also the non-asymptotic rapidly decreasing at infinity estimate for these function. We extend the classical parametrix method offered by E.E.Levi.
In the discrete setting of one-dimensional finite-differences we prove a Carleman estimate for a semi-discretization of the parabolic operator $\partial_t-\partial_x (c\partial_x)$ where the diffusion coefficient $c$ has a jump. As a consequence of this Carleman estimate, we deduce consistent null-controllability results for classes of semi-linear parabolic equations.
The global dynamics and regularity of parabolic-hyperbolic systems is an interesting topic in PDEs due to the coupling of competing dissipation and hyperbolic effects. This paper is concerned with the Cauchy problem of a parabolic-hyperbolic system derived from a chemotaxis model describing the dynamics of the initiation of tumor angiogenesis. It is shown that, as time tends to infinity, the Cauchy problem with large-amplitude discontinuous data admit global weak solutions which converge to a constant state (resp. a viscous shock wave) if the asymptotic states of initial values at far field ar…
We consider a parabolic PDE with Dirichlet boundary condition and monotone operator $A$ with non-standard growth controlled by an $N$-function depending on time and spatial variable. We do not assume continuity in time for the $N$-function. Using an additional regularization effect coming from the equation, we establish the existence of weak solutions and in the particular case of isotropic $N$-function, we also prove their uniqueness. This general result applies to equations studied in the literature like $p(t,x)$-Laplacian and double-phase problems.
By using some deep tools from microlocal analysis, J. Le Rousseau and L. Robbiano (Invent. Math., 183 (2011), 245--336) established several Carleman estimates for parabolic operators with isotropic diffusion coefficients which have jumps at interfaces. In this paper, we revisit the same problem but for the general case of anisotropic diffusion coefficients. Our main tools are a pointwise estimate for parabolic operators and a suitable chosen weight function.
We will show that the same type of estimates known for the fundamental solutions for scalar parabolic equations with smooth enough coefficients hold for the first order derivatives of fundamental solution with respect to space variables of scalar parabolic equations of divergence form with discontinuous coefficients. The estimate is very important for many applications. For example, it is important for the inverse problem identifying inclusions inside a heat conductive medium from boundary measurements.
We consider linear inhomogeneous non-autonomous parabolic problems associated to sesquilinear forms, with discontinuous dependence of time. We show that for these problems, the property of maximal parabolic regularity can be extrapolated to time integrability exponents $r\neq 2$. This allows us to prove maximal parabolic $L^r$-regularity for discontinuous non-autonomous second-order divergence form operators in very general geometric settings and to prove existence results for related quasilinear equations.
Li-Vogelius and Li-Nirenberg gave a gradient estimate for solutions of strongly elliptic equations and systems of divergence forms with piecewise smooth coefficients, respectively. The discontinuities of the coefficients are assumed to be given by manifolds of codimension 1, which we called them manifolds of discontinuities. Their gradient estimate is independent of the distances between manifolds of discontinuities. In this paper, we gave a parabolic version of their results. That is, we gave a gradient estimate for parabolic equations of divergence forms with piecewise smooth coefficients. T…
This paper is devoted to the study of some nonlinear parabolic equations with discontinuous diffusion intensities. Such problems appear naturally in physical and biological models. Our analysis is based on variational techniques and in particular on gradient flows in the space of probability measures equipped with the distance arising in the Monge-Kantorovich optimal transport problem. The associated internal energy functionals in general fail to be differentiable, therefore classical results do not apply directly in our setting. We study the combination of both linear and porous medium type d…
The Richards' equation is a model for flow of water in unsaturated soils. The coefficients of this (nonlinear) partial differential equation describe the permeability of the medium. Insufficient or uncertain measurements are commonly modeled by random coefficients. For flows in heterogeneous\textbackslash fractured\textbackslash porous media, the coefficients are modeled as discontinuous random fields, where the interfaces along the stochastic discontinuities represent transitions in the media. More precisely, the random coefficient is given by the sum of a (continuous) Gaussian random field a…
We consider a diffusive transport equation with discontinuous flux and prove the velocity averaging result under non-degeneracy conditions. In order to achieve the result, we introduce a new variant of micro-local defect functionals which are able to ``recognise'' changes of the type of the equation. As a corollary, we show the existence of a weak solution for the Cauchy problem for nonlinear degenerate parabolic equation with discontinuous flux. We also show existence of strong traces at $t=0$ for so-called quasi-solutions to degenerate parabolic equations under non-degeneracy conditions on t…
It is studied the Cauchy problem for the equations of Burgers' type but with bounded dissipation flux. Such equations degenerate to hyperbolic ones as the velocity gradient tends to infinity. Thus the discontinuous solutions are permitted. In the paper the definition of the generalized solution is given and the existence theorem is established in the classes of functions close to ones of bounded variation. The main feature of used a priori estimates is the fact that one needs to estimate only the diffusion flux, which allows to have in fact arbitrary local growth of the velocity gradient. The …
We study linear and quasilinear Venttsel initial-boundary value problems for parabolic operators with discontinuous coefficients. On the basis of the a priori estimates obtained, strong solvability in composite Sobolev spaces is proved.
We show that elliptic second order operators $A$ of divergence type fulfill maximal parabolic regularity on distribution spaces, even if the underlying domain is highly non-smooth, the coefficients of $A$ are discontinuous and $A$ is complemented with mixed boundary conditions. Applications to quasilinear parabolic equations with non-smooth data are presented.
We establish partial regularity for vector-valued solutions to parabolic systems where the coefficients are possibly discontinuous with respect to (x,t). More precisely, we assume a VMO-condition with respect to the (x,t) and continuity with respect to u and prove Hölder continuity of the solutions outside of singular sets.
We consider the situation when an elliptic problem in a subdomain $Ω_1$ of an $n$-dimensional bounded domain $Ω$ is coupled via inhomogeneous canonical transmission conditions to a parabolic problem in $Ω\setminusΩ_1$. In particular, we can treat elliptic-parabolic equations in bounded domains with discontinuous coefficients. Using Fourier multiplier techniques, we prove an a priori estimate for strong solutions to the equations in $L^p$-Sobolev spaces.
We prove the homogenization of fully nonlinear parabolic equations with periodic oscillating Dirichlet boundary conditions on certain general prescribed space-time domains. It was proved in [9,10] that for elliptic equations, the homogenized boundary data exists at boundary points with irrational normal directions, and it is generically discontinuous elsewhere. However for parabolic problems, on a flat moving part of the boundary, we prove the existence of continuous homogenized boundary data $\bar{g}$. We also show that, unlike the elliptic case, $\bar{g}$ can be discontinuous even if the ope…
The paper is a comprehensive study of the $L_p$ and the Schauder estimates for higher-order divergence type parabolic systems with discontinuous coefficients in the half space and cylindrical domains with conormal derivative boundary condition. For the $L_p$ estimates, we assume that the leading coefficients are only bounded measurable in the $t$ variable and $VMO$ with respect to $x$. We also prove the Schauder estimates in two situations: the coefficients are Hölder continuous only in the $x$ variable; the coefficients are Hölder continuous in both variables.
We consider a reaction-diffusion system with discontinuous reaction terms modeled by non-ideal relays. The system is motivated by an epigenetic population model of evolution of two-phenotype bacteria which switch phenotype in response to variations of environment. We prove the formation of patterns in the phenotype space. The mechanism responsible for pattern formation is based on memory (hysteresis) of the non-ideal relays.
We study linear time fractional diffusion equations in divergence form of time order less than one. It is merely assumed that the coefficients are measurable and bounded, and that they satisfy a uniform parabolicity condition. As the main result we establish for nonnegative weak supersolutions of such problems a weak Harnack inequality with optimal critical exponent. The proof relies on new a priori estimates for time fractional problems and uses Moser's iteration technique and an abstract lemma of Bombieri and Giusti, the latter allowing to avoid the rather technically involved approach via B…
This paper studies the Sobolev regularity estimates of weak solutions of a class of singular quasi-linear elliptic problems of the form $u_t - \mbox{div}[\mathbb{A}(x,t,u,\nabla u)]= \mbox{div}[{\mathbf F}]$ with homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions over bounded spatial domains. Our main focus is on the case that the vector coefficients $\mathbb{A}$ are discontinuous and singular in $(x,t)$-variables, and dependent on the solution $u$. Global and interior weighted $W^{1,p}(Ω, ω)$-regularity estimates are established for weak solutions of these equations, where $ω$ is a weight function in …
We deal with the existence of weak solutions for a mixed Neumann-Robin-Cauchy problem. The existence results are based on global-in-time estimates of approximating solutions, and the passage to the limit exploits compactness techniques. We investigate explicit estimates for solutions of the parabolic equations with nonhomogeneous boundary conditions and distributional right hand sides. The parabolic equation is of divergence form with discontinuous coefficients. We consider a nonlinear condition on a part of the boundary that the power laws (and the Robin boundary condition) appear as particul…
This paper investigates the existence of weak solutions of biquasilinear boundary value problem for a coupled elliptic-parabolic system of divergence form with discontinuous leading coefficients. The mathematical framework addressed in the article considers the presence of an additional nonlinearity in the model which reflects the radiative thermal boundary effects in some applications of interest. The results are obtained via the Rothe-Galerkin method. Only weak assumptions are made on the data and the boundary conditions are allowed to be on a general form. The major contribution of the curr…
We consider the optimal control of singular nonlinear partial differential equation which is the distributional formulation of the multiphase Stefan type free boundary problem for the general second order parabolic equation. Boundary heat flux is the control parameter, and the optimality criteria consist of the minimization of the $L_2$-norm declination of the trace of the solution to the PDE problem at the final moment from the given measurement. Sequence of finite-dimensional optimal control problems is introduced through finite differences. We establish existence of the optimal control and …
A finite element analysis of a Dirichlet boundary control problem governed by the linear parabolic equation is presented in this article. The Dirichlet control is considered in a closed and convex subset of the energy space $H^1(Ω\times(0,T)).$ We prove well-posedness and discuss some regularity results for the control problem. We derive the optimality system for the optimal control problem. The first order necessary optimality condition results in a simplified Signorini type problem for control variable. The space discretization of the state variable is done using conforming finite elements, …
Consider the interior transmission problem arising in inverse boundary value problems for the diffusion equation with discontinuous diffusion coefficients. We prove the unique solvability of the interior transmission problem by constructing its Green function. First, we construct a local parametrix for the interior transmission problem near the boundary in the Laplace domain, by using the theory of pseudo-differential operators with a large parameter. Second, by carefully analyzing the analyticity of the local parametrix in the Laplace domain and estimating it there, a local parametrix for the…
There was proposed the method of a factorization of PDE. The method is based on reduction of complicated systems to more easy ones (for example, due to dimension decrease). This concept is proposed in general case for the arbitrary PDE systems, and its concrete investigation is developing for the heat equation case. There is considered the category of second order parabolic equations posed on arbitrary manifolds. In this category, for the given nonlinear heat equation we could find morphisms from it to other parabolic equations with the same or a smaller number of independent variables. This a…