Optimal continuous dependence estimates for fractional degenerate parabolic equations

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00205-014-0737-x ; International audience ; We derive continuous dependence estimates for weak entropy solutions of degenerate parabolic equations with nonlinear fractional diffusion. The diffusion term involves the fractional Laplace operator, $\Delta^{\alpha/2}$ for $\alpha \in (0,2)$. Our results are quantitative and we exhibit an example for which they are optimal. We cover the dependence on the nonlinearities, and for the first time, the Lipschitz dependence on $\alpha$ in the $BV$-framework. The former estimate (dependence on nonlinearity) is robust in the sense that it is stable in the limits $\alpha \downarrow 0$ and $\alpha \uparrow 2$. In the limit $\alpha \uparrow 2$, $\Delta^{\alpha/2}$ converges to the usual Laplacian, and we show rigorously that we recover the optimal continuous dependence result of Cockburn and Gripenberg (J Differ Equ 151(2):231-251, 1999) for local degenerate parabolic equations (thus providing an alternative proof).