Uniqueness for parabolic equations without growth condition and applications to the mean curvature flow in \(\mathbb R^2\) (Q1864667)

\textit{K. Ecker} and \textit{G. Huisken} [Invent. Math. 105, 547-569 (1991; Zbl 0707.53009)] proved the existence for all positive times of a smooth solution to the mean curvature flow of entire graphs on \(\mathbb{R}^N\) with initial condition the graph of an arbitrary locally Lipschitz function without any growth conditions at infinity. The motivation of the authors of this article stems from the corresponding uniqueness question. Clearly, for linear equations uniqueness of the initial value problem could never hold without growth conditions. The authors prove a general comparison theorem for viscosity sub- and supersolutions to a certain class of fully nonlinear parabolic equations, without any growth conditions at infinity. Then they show how this result can be used to obtain uniqueness for a certain class of quasilinear parabolic equations in one space dimension of the form \[ {\partial u\over\partial t}- (f(x,t,u,u_x))_x=0. \] Here, the special case \(f(x, t, u, p)= \arctan(p)\) is included which corresponds to the mean curvature flow in \(\mathbb{R}^2\). The one-dimensionality is used by passing from \(u\) to a primitive \(v\) which satisfies \({\partial v\over\partial t}- f(x,t,v_x, v_{xx})= 0\). As a further application the authors show that, for entire continuous graphs as initial conditions, the classical mean curvature flow and the generalized evolution by mean curvature defined in the level set formulation coincide in \(\mathbb{R}^2\).