On solutions of the transport equation in the presence of singularities

We consider the transport equation on $[0,T]\times \R^n$ in the situation where the vector field is $BV$ off a set $S\subset [0,T]\times \R^n$. 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.

This is the accepted manuscript for an article accepted for publication in Transactions of the American Mathematics Society. This author's accepted manuscript version is made available as permitted by the publisher's (American Mathematical Society) Article Sharing Policy; reproduced under the CC-BY-NC-ND Creative Commons License.
First published in Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 375 (2022), 7187-7207, published by the American Mathematical Society.
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