On representation formulas for Hamilton Jacobi's equations related to calculus of variations problems (Q1859338)

The main results of the paper are Theorems 3.5 and 3.6 stating the existence and, respectively, the uniqueness of certain types of \textit{lower semicontinuous} generalized solutions of ``viscosity type'' of Hamilton-Jacobi (HJ) equations of the form: \[ {{\partial U}\over{\partial t}}(t,x)+H\left(t,x,U(t,x),{{\partial U}\over {\partial x}}(t,x)\right)=0, \;(t,x)\in (0,T)\times \mathbb{R}^n, \;U(T,x)\equiv g(x) \] under fairly weak assumptions on the data \(H(.,.,.,.)\) and \(g(.)\). The main idea seems to be that of ``representing'' the unique solution of the HJ equation as the \textit{value function}, \(V(t_0,x_0), \;(t_0,x_0)\in [0,T) \times \mathbb{R}^n\), of the optimal control problem that consists in minimizing \(u_0\in\mathbb{R}\) subject to: \[ u'(t)\leq -L(t,x(t),u(t),x'(t)) \text{ a.e. }(0,T), \;x(t_0)=x_0, \;u(t_0)=u_0, \;u(T)\geq g(x(T)) \] where the ``associated Lagrangean'' is defined by: \[ L(t,x,u,v):=\displaystyle\sup_{p\in R^n}[\langle p,v\rangle+H(t,x,u,-p)]. \] The authors introduce apparently new concepts of ``epiderivative'', ``proximal'' and ``subdifferential'' supersolutions and, respectively, subsolutions in the ``viscosity sense'' of the HJ equation and prove a large number of auxiliary results on various topics, including ``viability'' and ``invariance'' for differential inclusions.