The Dirichlet-to-Neumann map, viscosity solutions to eikonal equations, and the self-dual equations of pattern formation (Q1881718)

The main result of the paper seems to be Proposition 2.1 stating, essentially, that if \(\overline\Omega\) is a compact \(n\)-dimensional Riemannian manifold with the smooth boundary \(\partial\Omega\), if \(\theta\in C^\infty(\partial \Omega)\) is such that there exists \(a<1\) satisfying: \[ | \theta(x)-\theta(y)| \leq a \cdot d(x,y) \quad \forall \;x,y\in\partial\Omega \] and if \(u_\varepsilon\) is a solution of the Dirichlet problem \[ \varepsilon^2\Delta u_\varepsilon - u_\varepsilon=0 \quad\text{on }\Omega, \quad u_\varepsilon| _{\partial\Omega}=e^{-\theta/\varepsilon}, \varepsilon>0 \] then \[ \sup_{x\in\partial\Omega,\varepsilon\in(0,1)}\varepsilon | {{\partial_\nu u_\varepsilon(x)}\over{u_\varepsilon(x)}}| <\infty, \] where \(\partial_\nu u_\varepsilon(.)\) denotes the normal derivative of \(u_\varepsilon(.)\) at the boundary points. This result is then used to prove in Proposition 6.1 the fact that the function \(v_\varepsilon:=-\varepsilon\log u_\varepsilon\), which turns out to be a solution of the problem \[ \varepsilon \Delta v_\varepsilon +(1-| \nabla v_\varepsilon| ^2)=0 \quad\text{on } \Omega, \quad v_\varepsilon| _{\partial\Omega}=\theta, \] converges uniformly on \(\overline \Omega\), as \(\varepsilon\to 0_+\), to the unique viscosity solution of the eikonal equation \[ | \nabla v| ^2-1=0 \quad\text{on } \Omega, \quad v| _{\partial\Omega}=\theta. \] Several examples are considered in some detail and the main results are shown to be applicable to the analysis of the asymptotic minimisers of the Ginzburg-Landau variational problem for irrotational vector fields.