Uniqueness and existence for anisotropic degenerate parabolic equations with boundary conditions on a bounded rectangle

We study the comparison principle for anisotropic degenerate parabolic-hyperbolic equations with initial and nonhomogeneous boundary conditions. We prove a comparison theorem for any entropy sub- and super-solution, which immediately deduces the L(1) contractivity and therefore, uniqueness of entropy solutions. The method used here is based upon the kinetic formulation and the kinetic techniques developed by Lions, Perthame and Tadmor. By adapting and modifying those methods to the case of Dirichlet boundary problems for degenerate parabolic equations we can establish a comparison property. Moreover, in the quasi-isotropic case the existence of entropy solutions is proved. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.