Jump discontinuous viscosity solutions to second order degenerate elliptic equations (Q2349089)

The authors study the Dirichlet problem for linear degenerate elliptic partial differential equations. They interpret solutions in the viscosity sense, and assume the equation is only degenerate in the normal direction along a strictly interior \(n-1\) dimensional closed surface that divides the domain into two components. It was already known that viscosity solutions can be discontinuous along the surface, due to the degeneracy. If the equation is strictly monotone in the zeroth order term, the authors show that the PDE can be decoupled into two PDEs. One PDE holds inside and on the closed surface (with no boundary data), and the other PDE holds outside the closed surface with the original Dirichlet conditions. The solutions of the two independent PDEs are equal on the separating surface, and when pieced together give the unique viscosity solution of the original PDE. The authors also show that the value of the solution along the separating surface can be computed by solving the original PDE restricted to the surface. When the equation is not strictly monotone in the zeroth order term, the solution may be discontinuous along the separating surface. In this case the authors show that the decomposition still holds, and they obtain the unique discontinuous viscosity solution of the PDE, up to an ambiguity in the assignment of the values of the solution along the surface of discontinuity. The authors also examine gradient blow-up of solutions near the separating surface.