On solutions of the transport equation in the presence of singularities

TL;DR

This paper establishes existence and uniqueness of solutions to the transport equation with singularities, under conditions on the fractal dimension of the singular set and the integrability of the vector field, extending previous results.

Contribution

It improves upon prior work by allowing the vector field to be BV off a singular set and analyzes the behavior of trajectories relative to these singularities.

Findings

Solutions exist and are unique under small fractal dimension of singularities.

Almost all trajectories avoid intersecting the singular set.

Solutions are well-defined for evolving curve-like singularities with bounded box-counting dimension.

Abstract

We consider the transport equation on $[0,T]\times \mathbb{R}^n$ in the situation where the vector field is $BV$ off a set $S\subset [0,T]\times \mathbb{R}^n$. We demonstrate that solutions exist and are unique provided that the set of singularities has a sufficiently small anisotropic fractal dimension and the normal component of the vector field is sufficiently integrable near the singularities. This result improves upon recent results of Ambrosio who requires the vector field to be of bounded variation everywhere. In addition, we demonstrate that under these conditions almost every trajectory of the associated regular Lagrangian flow does not intersect the set $S$ of singularities. Finally, we consider the particular case of an initial set of singularities that evolve in time so the singularities consists of curves in the phase space, which is typical in applications such as vortex dynamics. We demonstrate that solutions of the transport equation exist and are unique provided that the box-counting dimension of the singularities is bounded in terms of the H\"older exponent of the curves.