Existence of weak solutions for nonlinear drift-diffusion equations with measure data

Abstract: We consider nonlinear drift-diffusion equations (both porous medium equations and fast diffusion equations) with a measure-valued external force. We establish existence of nonnegative weak solutions satisfying gradient estimates, provided that the drift term belongs to a sub-scaling class relevant to $L^1$-space. If the drift is divergence-free, such a class is, however, relaxed so that drift suffices to be included in a certain supercritical scaling class, and the nonlinear diffusion can be less restrictive as well. By handling both the measure data and the drift, we obtain a new type of energy estimates. As an application, we construct weak solutions for a specific type of nonlinear diffusion equation with measure data coupled to the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations.