H\"older Stability and Uniqueness for The Mean Field Games System via Carleman Estimates

TL;DR

This paper proves H"older stability and uniqueness for the Mean Field Games system using new Carleman estimates, showing solutions are uniquely determined and stable under certain boundary conditions.

Contribution

Introduction of two novel Carleman estimates enabling stability and uniqueness results for the MFG system with partial boundary data.

Findings

H"older stability estimates for the MFG system

Uniqueness of solutions under partial boundary conditions

New Carleman estimates applicable to coupled parabolic PDEs

Abstract

We are concerned with the mathematical study of the Mean Field Games system (MFGS). In the conventional setup, the MFGS is a system of two coupled nonlinear parabolic PDEs of the second order in a backward-forward manner, namely one terminal and one initial conditions are prescribed respectively for the value function and the population density. In this paper, we show that uniqueness of solutions to the MFGS can be guaranteed if, among all four possible terminal and initial conditions, eitheir only two terminal or only two initial conditions are given. In both cases H\"older stability estimates are proven. This means that he accuracies of the solutions are estimated in terms of the given data. Moreover, these estimates readily imply uniqueness of corresponding problems for the MFGS. The main mathematical apparatus to establish those results is two new Carleman estimates, which may find application in other contexts associated with coupled parabolic PDEs.