Regularity of weak KAM solutions and Mañé's conjecture (Q2354254)

The author revisits the construction of Fathi's weak KAM solutions as a prelude to addressing uniqueness and regularity issues for the critical Hamilton-Jacobi equation. The setting is a smooth compact, connected Riemannian manifold \(M\) without boundary, of dimension two or more, and a Tonelli Hamiltonian \(H:T^*M\to\mathbb{R}\) of class \(C^k\), \(k\geq 2\). The (Mañé) critical value of \(H\), \(c[H]\) is the infimum of values \(c\in\mathbb{R}\) for which there is a \(C^1\) function \(u:M\to\mathbb{R}\) that satisfies \(H(x,du(x))\leq C\) for all \(X\in M\). The weak KAM theory developed by Fathi focuses on a study of the solutions of the critical Hamilton-Jacobi equation \(H(x,du(x))= c[H]\) for all \(X\in M\). The author explores the connections between Fathi's work and the Mañé conjecture via the Aubry set. He proves the following theorem: If \(H:T^*M\to\mathbb{R}\) is a \(C^k\) Tonelli Hamiltonian with \(k\geq 2\) and if the associated critical Hamilton-Jacobi equation has a unique solution, then the Aubry set \(A(H)\) is connected.