ON SELECTION OF SOLUTIONS TO VECTORIAL HAMILTON-JACOBI SYSTEM.pdfVIP

ON SELECTION OF SOLUTIONS TO VECTORIAL HAMILTON-JACOBI SYSTEM BAISHENG YAN Abstract. In this paper, we discuss some principles on the selection of the solutions of a special vectorial Hamilton-Jacobi system defined by (1.1) below. We first classify the equivalent solutions based on a well- known construction and then discuss some selection principles using intuitive descriptions of coarseness or maximality of solutions. We also discuss a selection principle based on comparison of the projections of a solution with certain smooth functions and introduce a notion of partial viscosity solutions for the vectorial Hamilton-Jacobi equation, which generalizes the well-known notion of viscosity solutions in the scalar case. Since we mainly work in the framework of Sobolev solutions, we show that, as in the scalar case, for certain domains the partial viscosity principle may rule out many interesting Lipschitz solutions. 1. Introduction In this paper, we discuss some principles on the selection of the solutions of a special vectorial Hamilton-Jacobi system defined by (1.1) Du(x) ∈ K a.e. x ∈ Ω, where K is a given set of m × n real matrices, Ω is a bounded domain in Rn , u is a mapping from Ω to Rm and Du is the gradient matrix of u: i Du(x) = (∂u /∂x ), i = 1, 2, ..., m, j = 1, 2, ..., n. We study the solutions of j system (1.1) in the usual Sobolev space W 1,p (Ω; Rm ) for some 1 ≤ p ≤ ∞ with an affine Dirichlet boundary condition (1.2) u|∂Ω = ξx + b, where ξ is a given m ×n matrix and b is a given vector in