Sobolev contractivity of gradient flow maximal functions

We prove that the energy dissipation property of gradient flows extends to the semigroup maximal operators in various settings. In particular, we show that the vertical maximal function relative to the $p$-parabolic extension does not increase the $\dot{W}^{1,p}$ norm of $\dot{W}^{1,p}(\mathbb{R}^n) \cap L^{2}(\mathbb{R}^n)$ functions when $p > 2$. We also obtain analogous results in the setting of uniformly parabolic and elliptic equations with bounded, measurable, real and symmetric coefficients, where the solutions do not have a representation formula via a convolution.