Uniqueness of weak solutions of the Hamilton Jacobi Equation

functional-analysishamilton-jacobi-equationintegrationpartial differential equations

I'm doing a seminar this semester concerning PDE's and their properties. I'm supposed to hold a presentation about the uniqueness of weak solutions of the Hamilton Jacobi Equation. It's a Theorem from Evans' PDE. The Book defines a weak solution to be a function with the following properties:
Weak solutions in Evans

But there are a few things I don't understand in the proof showing uniqueness. The first being, that Evans defines a mollification over both the space and time variables $(x,t)$. How is this even defined? My guess would have been to take the standard mollifier $\eta_{\varepsilon}:\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\longrightarrow \mathbb{R}$ for an $\varepsilon>0$, and interpret the variable $y \in \mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ as $y=(x,t) \in \mathbb{R}^n\times \mathbb{R}$. Then the mollification could be written as (with $\mathcal{L}^n$ being the Lebesgue measure in n dimensions):
\begin{equation}
u_{\varepsilon}(x,t)=(u*\eta_{\varepsilon})(x,t)=\int_{0}^{t}\int_{\mathbb{R}^n}u(y,\tau)\eta_{\varepsilon}(x-y,t-\tau)\ d\mathcal{L}^{n}(y)\ d\mathcal{L}^1(\tau)
\end{equation}

Is this the right definition? Because I am not sure when it comes to integrating over the time domain.

My second struggle is the following inequality, where Evans says that:
\begin{equation}
|\nabla u_{\varepsilon}|\leq \text{Lip}(u)
\end{equation}

Where $\nabla u_{\varepsilon}$ is the gradient and $\text{Lip}(u)$ is the Lipschitz constant of $u$. Now I kind of get why this has to hold, as since $u$ is Lipschitz the partial derivatives $\partial_i u$ have to be bounded by the Lipschitz constant, since
\begin{equation}
|\partial_i u| = \lim_{h \to 0}\frac{|u(x+he_i,t)-u(x,t)|}{|h|}\leq \lim_{h\to 0}\text{Lip}(u)\frac{|he_i|}{|h|}=\text{Lip}(u)
\end{equation}

Thus one would get for the partial derivatives of $u_{\varepsilon}$ the following bound:
\begin{equation}
|\partial_i u_{\varepsilon}|=|(\partial_i u) *\eta_{\varepsilon}|\leq \text{Lip}(u)\cdot\|\eta_{\varepsilon}\|_{L^1}=\text{Lip}(u)
\end{equation}

But then taking the euclidean norm of the gradient would yield
\begin{equation}
|\nabla u_{\varepsilon}|\leq \sqrt{n}\cdot\text{Lip}(u)
\end{equation}

Why is there no factor $\sqrt{n}$ in front of $\text{Lip}(u)$?

The last thing I'm having difficulties with, is that Evans states, that the inequality c) in the definition of weak solution implies that
\begin{equation}
D^2u_{\varepsilon}\leq C\Big(1+\frac{1}{s}\Big)I
\end{equation}

for an appropriate constant $C$, and all $\varepsilon>0, y \in \mathbb{R}^n, s>2\varepsilon$. Now I kind of get, that this just means, that for all $y\in \mathbb{R}^n$ the following holds:
\begin{equation}
y^T(D^2u_{\varepsilon})y \leq C\Big(1+\frac{1}{s}\Big)|y|^2
\end{equation}

and if you divide by $|y|^2$ you have the second directional derivative in the direction of $y$ on the left side of the equation. Then one can just use the definition of the second symmetric derivative which is exactly condition c). Now what I don't understand is where the condition $s>2\varepsilon$ comes from or where exactly it is used. Does it have something to do with the mollification?

Best Answer

  1. The right mollification (at least the one consistent with Evans' notation and which works for the proof) should be $$ u^\varepsilon(x,t)=\int_0^\infty\int_{\mathbb{R}^n}\eta_\varepsilon (x-\xi,t-\tau)u(\xi,\tau)d\xi d\tau=\int_0^\infty\int_{\mathbb{R}^n}\eta_\varepsilon (\xi,\tau)u(x-\xi,t-\tau)d\xi d\tau $$
  2. Fix a vector $e\in\mathbb{R}^n$ with $|e|=1$. We estimate \begin{align*} |u^\varepsilon(x+he,t)-u^\varepsilon(x,t)|&\leq\int_0^\infty\int_{\mathbb{R}^n}\eta_\varepsilon (\xi,\tau)|u(x+he-\xi,t-\tau)-u(x-\xi,t-\tau)|d\xi d\tau\\ &\leq \int_0^\infty\int_{\mathbb{R}^n}\eta_\varepsilon (\xi,\tau)\operatorname{Lip}(u)hd\xi d\tau=\operatorname{Lip}(u)h \end{align*} so that $$ \frac{u^\varepsilon(x+he,t)-u^\varepsilon(x,t)}{h}\leq \operatorname{Lip}(u). $$ Define the one-variable function $f(h)=u^\varepsilon(x+he,t)$. By the previous line $f'(0)\leq \operatorname{Lip}(u)$, but now also take $e=Du^\varepsilon(x,t)/|Du^\varepsilon(x,t)|$ to get \begin{align} f'(0)=Du^\varepsilon(x,t)\cdot e=|Du^\varepsilon(x,t)|. \end{align}
  3. The mollification $u^\varepsilon$ is only defined for $(y,s)$ at least $\varepsilon$ away from the boundary. Although I don't see why you would need to require $s>2\varepsilon$ instead of just $s>\varepsilon$.
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