Function spaces, time derivatives and compactness for evolving families of Banach spaces with applications to PDEs

Abstract

We develop a functional framework suitable for the treatment of partial differential equations and variational problems on evolving families of Banach spaces. We propose a definition for the weak time derivative that does not rely on the availability of a Hilbertian structure and explore conditions under which spaces of weakly differentiable functions (with values in an evolving Banach space) relate to classical Sobolev--Bochner spaces. An Aubin--Lions compactness result is proved. We analyse concrete examples of function spaces over time-evolving spatial domains and hypersurfaces for which we explicitly provide the definition of the time derivative and verify isomorphism properties with the aforementioned Sobolev--Bochner spaces. We conclude with the proof of well posedness for a class of nonlinear monotone problems on an abstract evolving space (generalising the evolutionary $p$-Laplace equation on a moving domain or surface) and identify some additional problems that can be formulated with the setting developed in this work.