Classical solutions of the Boltzmann equation with irregular initial data

This article considers the spatially inhomogeneous, non-cutoff Boltzmann equation. We construct a large-data classical solution given bounded, measurable initial data with uniform polynomial decay of mild order in the velocity variable. Our result requires no assumption of strict positivity for the initial data, except locally in some small ball in phase space. We also obtain existence results for weak solutions when our decay and positivity assumptions for the initial data are relaxed. Because the regularity of our solutions may degenerate as $t \rightarrow 0$, uniqueness is a challenging issue. We establish weak-strong uniqueness under the additional assumption that the initial data possesses no vacuum regions and is H\"older continuous. As an application of our short-time existence theorem, we prove global existence near equilibrium for bounded, measurable initial data that decays at a finite polynomial rate in velocity.