Cahn-Hilliard equation with dynamic boundary conditions and mass constraint on the boundary

Abstract: The well-known Cahn-Hilliard equation entails mass conservation if a suitable boundary condition is prescribed. In the case when the equation is also coupled with a dynamic boundary condition, including the Laplace-Beltrami operator on the boundary, the total mass on the inside of the domain and its trace on the boundary should be conserved. The new issue of this paper is the setting of a mass constraint on the boundary. The effect of this additional constraint is the appearance of a Lagrange multiplier; in fact, two Lagrange multipliers arise, one for the bulk, the other for the boundary. The well-posedness of the resulting Cahn-Hilliard system with dynamic boundary condition and mass constraint on the boundary is obtained. The theory of evolution equations governed by subdifferentials is exploited and a complete characterization of the solution is given.