On well-posedness for second-order degenerate parabolic equations with unbounded lower-order terms

Abstract In this paper, we establish the well-posedness of Cauchy problems for weak solutions to second-order degenerate parabolic equations with a non-smooth, time-dependent degenerate elliptic part that includes both bounded and unbounded lower-order terms. The unbounded lower-order terms are allowed to lie in mixed time-space Lebesgue or even Lorentz spaces. Our notion of weak solutions is formulated under minimal assumptions. We prove the existence and uniqueness of a fundamental solution, which coincides with the associated evolution family for the homogeneous problem (i.e., with zero source term) and provides a representation formula for all weak solutions. We also establish L 2 {L^{2}} off-diagonal estimates for the fundamental solution and derive Gaussian upper bounds under the weak assumption of Moser’s L 2 {L^{2}} - L ∞ {L^{\infty}} estimates for weak solutions. Our approach is purely variational and avoids any a priori regularity assumptions on weak solutions or regularization via smooth approximations. Two key ingredients are norm inequalities for fractional powers of the degenerate Laplacian, and a set of embeddings that ensure time continuity of weak solutions, extending the classical Lions regularity theorem and accommodating a wide class of source terms.