Reachable set for Hamilton-Jacobi equations with non-smooth Hamiltonian and scalar conservation laws

TL;DR

This paper characterizes the set of all possible solutions at a given time for Hamilton-Jacobi equations with convex, possibly non-smooth Hamiltonians, and extends the analysis to scalar conservation laws, providing geometric insights and regularity estimates.

Contribution

It offers a complete description of the reachable set for viscosity solutions with non-smooth convex Hamiltonians, including the case H(p) = |p|, and applies these results to scalar conservation laws.

Findings

Geometric description of the reachable set for H(p) = |p|

Sharp regularity estimates for reachable functions

Structural properties of the reachable set

Abstract

We give a full characterization of the range of the operator which associates, to any initial condition, the viscosity solution at time $T$ of a Hamilton-Jacobi equation with convex Hamiltonian. Our main motivation is to be able to treat the case of convex Hamiltonians with no further regularity assumptions. We give special attention to the case $H(p) = |p|$, for which we provide a rather geometrical description of the range of the viscosity operator by means of an interior ball condition on the sublevel sets. From our characterization of the reachable set, we are able to deduce further results concerning, for instance, sharp regularity estimates for the reachable functions, as well as structural properties of the reachable set. The results are finally adapted to the case of scalar conservation laws in dimension one.