arXiv subjects

Robert Lasarzik

Publications and source records attributed to Robert Lasarzik.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Weak solutions and weak-strong uniqueness for a Cahn-Hilliard type model with chemotaxis

We prove existence of weak solutions and weak-strong uniqueness for a mathematical model which couples the evolution of a phase-parameter $\varphi$ satisfying a Cahn-Hilliard type relation with the one of an additional variable $\sigma$ influencing the phase separation process. The main application of the model refers to cancer growth processes, where $\sigma$ may represent the concentration of a chemical substance affecting the evolution of the tumor, and is governed by a nonlinear parabolic equation characterized by a cross-diffusion term alike that occurring in the Keller-Segel model for chemotaxis. This term is also responsible for the most relevant difficulties in the mathematical analysis of the system. Complementing previous results on the model, we prove here global in time existence for a very weak notion of solution to which a suitable energy imbalance and a logarithmic inequality for the nutrient are added. Noting that the system also admits local in time "strong" solutions, we can also exhibit a weak-strong uniqueness result whose proof exploits in an essential way the entropy-type inequality satisfied by weak solutions.

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arXiv2026

On the equivalence of generalized solution concepts for systems of hyperbolic conservations laws in fluid dynamics

We investigate the relation between several generalized solution concepts for nonlinear PDE systems from fluid dynamics. More precisely, we study measure-valued solutions, dissipative weak solutions, and energy-variational solutions. For the incompressible Euler equations, we prove the equivalence of all three concepts, provided that the energy inequality is formulated in the appropriate way. For several important examples of conservation laws arising in fluid dynamics, we establish the equivalence between energy-variational and suitably refined dissipative weak solutions, where the defect measures are controlled sharply by the energy defect. These examples comprise the compressible isentropic Euler system, the Euler--Korteweg system, and the Euler--Poisson system.

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arXiv2026

Convergence analysis for a finite-volume scheme for the Euler- and Navier-Stokes-Korteweg system via energy-variational solutions

We consider a structure-preserving finite-volume scheme for the Euler-Korteweg (EK) and Navier-Stokes-Korteweg (NSK) equations. We prove that its numerical solutions converge to energy-variational solutions of EK or NSK under mesh refinement. Energy-variational solutions constitute a novel solution concept that has recently been introduced for hyperbolic conservation laws, including the EK system, and which we extend to the NSK model. Our proof is based on establishing uniform estimates following from the properties of the structure-preserving scheme, and using the stability of the energy-variational formulation under weak convergence in the natural energy spaces.

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arXiv2026

Probabilistically Strong Solutions to Stochastic Euler Equations

In this paper, we establish the existence of probabilistically strong, measure-valued solutions for the stochastic incompressible Navier--Stokes equations and prove their convergence, in the vanishing viscosity limit, to probabilistically strong solutions for the stochastic incompressible Euler equations. In particular, this solves the open problem of constructing probabilistically strong solutions for the stochastic Euler equations that satisfy the energy inequality for general $L^2$ initial data. We introduce the concept of energy-variational solutions in the stochastic context in order to treat the nonlinearities without changing the probability space. Furthermore, we extend these results to fluids driven by transport noise.

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arXiv2026

Existence and selection of solutions in the energy-variational framework with applications in fluid dynamics

We provide a novel existence result for energy-variational solutions to a general class of evolutionary partial differential equations. Compared to previous works on this solution concept, the generalization is mainly twofold: a relaxation of the assumptions on the regularity weight and the admissibility of energies with merely linear growth. We apply the abstract theory to the Euler--Korteweg system and to the equation for binormal curvature flow, which serve as examples that require the first and second generalization, respectively. Moreover, we discuss criteria that are suitable for the selection of particular energy-variational solutions in the possibly multi-valued solution set.

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arXiv2026

Energy-variational solutions for geodynamical two-phase flows -- From logarithmic to double-obstacle potentials by variational convergence

In [Cheng, Lasarzik, Thomas 2025 ARXIV-Preprint 2509.25508], we studied a Cahn--Hilliard two-phase model describing the flow of two viscoelastoplastic fluids in the framework of dissipative solutions using a logarithmic potential for the phase-field variable. This choice of potential has the effect that the fluid mixture cannot fully separate into two pure phases. The notion of dissipative solutions is based on a relative energy-dissipation inequality featuring a suitable regularity weight. In this way, this is a very weak solution concept. In the present work, we study the well-posedness of the geodynamical two-phase flow in the notion of energy-variational solutions. They feature an additional scalar energy variable that majorizes the system energy along solutions and they are further characterized by a variational inequality that combines an energy-dissipation estimate with the weak formulation of the system adding an error term that accounts for the mismatch between the energy variable and the system energy multiplied by a suitable regularity weight. We give a comparison of these two concepts. We further study different phase-field potentials for the geodynamical two-phase flow model. In particular, we address the variational limit from a potential with a logarithmic contribution to a double-obstacle potential, then also allowing for the emergence of pure phases. This study underlines that, thanks to its structure, the energy-variational solution is better suited for variational convergence methods than the dissipative solution.

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arXiv2025

Analysis of a Cahn--Hilliard model for viscoelastoplastic two-phase flows

We study a Cahn--Hilliard two-phase model describing the flow of two viscoelastoplastic fluids, which arises in geodynamics. A phase-field variable indicates the proportional distribution of the two fluids in the mixture. The motion of the incompressible mixture is described in terms of the volume-averaged velocity. Besides a volume-averaged Stokes-like viscous contribution, the Cauchy stress tensor in the momentum balance contains an additional volume-averaged internal stress tensor to model the elastoplastic behavior. This internal stress has its own evolution law featuring the nonlinear Zaremba-Jaumann time-derivative and the subdifferential of a non-smooth plastic potential. The well-posedness of this system is studied in two cases: Based on a regularization by stress-diffusion we obtain the existence of Leray-Hopf-type weak solutions. In order to deduce existence results also in the absence of the regularization, we introduce the concept of dissipative solutions, which is based on an estimate for the relative energy. We discuss general properties of dissipative solutions and show their existence for the viscoelastoplastic two-phase model in the setting of stress-diffusion. By a limit passage in the relative energy inequality for vanishing stress-diffusion, we conclude an existence result for the non-regularized model.

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arXiv2025

Energy-variational structure in evolution equations

We consider different measure-valued solvability concepts from the literature and show that they could be simplified by using the energy-variational structure of the underlying system of partial differential equations. In the considered examples, we prove that a certain class of improved measure-valued solutions can be equivalently expressed as an energy-variational solution. The first concept represents the solution as a high-dimensional Young measure, whether for the second concept, only a scalar auxiliary variable is introduced and the formulation is relaxed to an energy-variational inequality. We investigate four examples: the two-phase Navier--Stokes equations, a quasilinear wave equation, a system stemming from polyconvex elasticity, and the Ericksen--Leslie equations equipped with the Oseen--Frank energy. The wide range of examples suggests that this is a recurrent feature in evolution equations in general.

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arXiv2024

Existence and weak-strong uniqueness for damage systems in viscoelasticity

In this paper we investigate the existence of solutions and their weak-strong uniqueness property for a PDE system modelling damage in viscoelastic materials. In fact, we address two solution concepts, weak and strong solutions. For the former, we obtain a global-in-time existence result, but the highly nonlinear character of the system prevents us from proving their uniqueness. For the latter, we prove local-in-time existence. Then, we show that the strong solution, as long as it exists, is unique in the class of weak solutions. This weak-strong uniqueness statement is proved by means of a suitable relative energy inequality.

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arXiv2024

Existence of suitable weak solutions to an anisotropic electrokinetic flow model

In this article we present a system of coupled non-linear PDEs modeling an anisotropic electrokinetic flow. We show the existence of suitable weak solutions in three spatial dimensions, that is weak solutions which fulfill an energy inequality, via a regularized system. The flow is modeled by a Navier--Stokes--Nernst--Planck--Poisson system and the anisotropy is introduced via space dependent diffusion matrices in the Nernst--Planck and Poisson equations.

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arXiv2023

Energy-variational solutions for viscoelastic fluid models

In this article, we introduce the concept of energy-variational solutions for a large class of systems of nonlinear evolutionary partial differential equations. Under certain convexity assumptions, the existence of such solutions can be shown constructively by an adapted minimizing movement scheme. Weak-strong uniqueness follows by a suitable relative energy inequality. Our main motivation is to apply the general framework to viscoelastic fluid models. Therefore, we give a short overview on different versions of such models and their derivation. The abstract result is applied to two of these viscoelastic fluid models in full detail. In the conclusion, we comment on further applications of the general theory and its possible impact.

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arXiv2022

Existence of energy-variational solutions to hyperbolic conservation laws

We introduce the concept of energy-variational solutions for hyperbolic conservation laws. Intrinsically, these energy-variational solutions fulfill the weak-strong uniqueness principle and the semi-flow property, and the set of solutions is convex and weakly-star closed. The existence of energy-variational solutions is proven via a suitable time-discretization scheme under certain assumptions. This general result yields existence of energy-variational solutions to the magnetohydrodynamical equations for ideal incompressible fluids and to the Euler equations in both the incompressible and the compressible case. Moreover, we show that energy-variational solutions to the Euler equations coincide with dissipative weak solutions.

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arXiv2022

Analysis and numerical approximation of energy-variational solutions to the Ericksen--Leslie equations

We define the concept of energy-variational solutions for the Ericksen--Leslie equations in three spatial dimensions. This solution concept is finer than dissipative solutions and satisfies the weak-strong uniqueness property. For a certain choice of the regularity weight, the existence of energy-variational solutions implies the existence of measure-valued solutions and for a different choice, we construct an energy-variational solution with the help of an implementable, structure-inheriting space-time discretization. Computational studies are performed in order to provide some evidence of the applicability of the proposed algorithm.

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arXiv2021

Weak-strong uniqueness and energy-variational solutions for a class of viscoelastoplastic fluid models

We study a model for a fluid showing viscoelastic and viscoplastic behavior, which describes the flow in terms of the fluid velocity and an internal stress. This stress tensor is transported via the Zaremba--Jaumann rate, and it is subject to two dissipation processes: one induced by a nonsmooth convex potential and one by stress diffusion. We show short-time existence of strong solutions as well as their uniqueness in a class of Leray--Hopf type weak solutions satisfying the tensorial component in the sense of an evolutionary variational inequality. The global-in-time existence of such generalized solutions has been established in a previous work. We further study the limit when stress diffusion vanishes. In this case, the above notion of generalized solutions is no longer suitable, and we introduce the concept of energy-variational solutions, which is based on an inequality for the relative energy. We derive general properties of energy-variational solutions and show their existence by passing to the non-diffusive limit in the relative energy inequality satisfied by generalized solutions for non-zero stress diffusion.

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arXiv2021

On the existence of weak solutions in the context of multidimensional incompressible fluid dynamics

We define the concept of energy-variational solutions for the Navier--Stokes and Euler equations. The underlying relative energy inequality holds as an equality for classical solutions and if the additional variable vanishes, these solutions are equivalent to the weak formulation with the strong energy inequality. By introducing an additional defect variable in time, all restrictions and all concatenations of energy-variational solutions are again energy-variational solutions. Via the criterion of maximal dissipation, a unique solution is selected that is not only continuously depending on the data but also turns out to be a unique weak solution.

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arXiv2020

Analysis of a thermodynamically consistent Navier--Stokes--Cahn--Hilliard model

In this paper, existence of generalized solutions to a thermodynamically consistent Navier--Stokes--Cahn--Hilliard model introduced in [18] is proven in any space dimension. The generalized solvability concepts are measure-valued and dissipative solutions. The measure-valued formulation incorporates an entropy inequality and an energy inequality instead of an energy balance in a nowadays standard way, the Gradient flow of the internal variable is fulfilled in a weak and the momentum balance in a measure-valued sense. In the dissipative formulation, the distributional relations of the momentum balance and the energy as well as entropy inequality are replaced by a relative energy inequality. Additionally, we prove the weak-strong uniqueness of the proposed solution concepts and that all generalized solutions with additional regularity are indeed strong solutions.

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arXiv2020

Numerical Analysis for Nematic Electrolytes

We consider a system of nonlinear PDEs modeling nematic electrolytes, and construct a dissipative solution with the help of its implementable, structure-inheriting space-time discretization. Computational studies are performed to study the mutual effects of electric, elastic, and viscous effects onto the molecules in a nematic electrolyte.

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arXiv2020

Dissipative solution to the Ericksen-Leslie system equipped with the Oseen-Frank energy

We analyze the Ericksen-Leslie system equipped with the Oseen-Frank energy in three space dimensions. The new concept of dissipative solutions is introduced. Recently, the author introduced the concept of measure-valued solutions to the considered system and showed global existence as well as weak-strong uniqueness of these generalized solutions. In this paper, we show that the expectation of the measure valued solution is a dissipative solution. The concept of a dissipative solution itself relies on an inequality instead of an equality, but is described by functions instead of parametrized measures. These solutions exist globally and fulfill the weak-strong uniqueness property. Additionally, we generalize the relative energy inequality to solutions fulfilling different nonhomogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions and incorporate the influence of a temporarily constant electromagnetic field. Relying on this generalized energy inequality, we investigate the long-time behavior and show that all solutions converge for the large time limit to a certain steady state.

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