Existence of solutions to a class of weakly coercive diffusion equations with singular initial data

We prove existence of suitably defined {\em measure-valued solutions} to the homogeneous Dirichlet initial-boundary value problem with a Radon measure as initial datum, for a class of degenerate parabolic equations without strong coerciveness. The notion of solution is natural, since it is obtained by a suitable {\em approximation procedure} which can be regarded as a first step towards a continuous dependence on the initial data. Moreover, we also discuss some qualitative properties of the constructed solutions concerning the evolution of their singular part.