Absence of the Lavrentiev phenomenon for degenerate parabolic double phase problems

Abstract: We establish the absence of the Lavrentiev phenomenon for degenerate parabolic double phase problems. Any finite-energy function in the natural parabolic class admits smooth approximations with convergence in the parabolic Sobolev space and convergence of the corresponding energy. We provide explicit gap bound conditions and derive improved bounds under additional assumptions such as boundedness or stronger time regularity.