Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2014 / iii / Paper 7 / 1 / c / Solution

Taking the essential supremum in the characteristic solution gives the sharper estimateIndeed, the bijective characteristic flow map preserves each spatial-velocity essential supremum. If $H_t={\mathrm{esssup}}_{0\le s\le t,x,v\in \mathbb{R}}|h(s,x,v)|$, this proves $\Vert f_t{\Vert }_{\infty }\le \Vert f_0{\Vert }_{\infty }+t{H}_t$. A time-independent source has $H_t=\Vert h{\Vert }_{L^{\infty }({\mathbb{R}}^2)}$, which is the displayed form. For a time-dependent source, the same symbol must mean a bound uniform over the elapsed time interval; its norm at the final time alone need not bound the accumulated forcing.

The bound is sharp. Take $f_0=1$ and $h=1$, giving $f(t,x,v)=1+t$ and equality for every $t\ge 0$. Both functions are smooth and bounded, although their finite-$p$ integrals over the whole plane are infinite.