A direct method for doubly nonlinear equations via convexification in spaces of measures and duality

Abstract

Existence of solutions to doubly nonlinear equations in reflexive Banach spaces is established by resorting to a global-in-time variational approach inspired by De Giorgi's principle, which characterizes the associated flows as null-minimizers of a suitable energy-dissipation functional defined on trajectories. In contrast to the celebrated minimizing movements scheme, the proposed strategy does not rely on any time-discretization or iterative constructions. Instead, it provides a direct method based on the relaxation of the problem in spaces of measures, constrained by the continuity equation: in this procedure, no gap is introduced due to the Ambrosio's superposition principle. Within this weak convex framework, the validity of the null-minimization property is recovered through two further steps. First, a careful application of the Von Neumann minimax theorem yields an identification of the dual problem as a supremum over the set of smooth and bounded cylinder functions, solving an Hamilton-Jacobi-type inequality. Secondly, a suitable "backward boundedness" property of solutions to such Hamilton-Jacobi system gives a proper bound of the dual problem, ensuring that the minimum value of the original functional is actually zero. The proposed strategy naturally extends to non-autonomous equations, encompassing time- and space-dependent dissipation potentials and time-dependent potential energies.