No label defined (Q3840751)

The paper contains a detailed analysis of the connexion between De Giorgi's theory of barriers and the level set method for geometric evolution problems. Given a collection \({\mathcal F}\) of ``smooth flows'', a barrier for \({\mathcal F}\) is a set valued map \(\phi(t)\) such that \(f(a)\subset\phi(a)\) implies \(f(b)\subset\phi(b)\) whenever \(f:[a,b]\to{\mathcal P}({\mathbb R}^n)\) is a smooth flow. The minimal barrier \({\mathcal M}(E,{\mathcal F})(t)\) is the intersection of all barriers \(\phi(t)\) which contain \(E\) at time zero. Extending the results of a previous paper by Bellettini and Paolini devoted only to the mean curvature flow, barriers are compared to viscosity solutions of \[ {\partial u\over\partial t}+F\left(t,u,\nabla u,\nabla^2u\right)=0 \tag \(*\) \] by taking as \({\mathcal F}={\mathcal F}_F\) the class of smooth supersolutions of \((*)\). The main results of the paper are the identities \[ {\mathcal M}_*(E,{\mathcal F}_F)(t)=\bigl\{x\in{\mathbb R}^n:\;u(t,x)<0\bigr\},\quad {\mathcal M}^*(E,{\mathcal F}_F)(t)=\bigl\{x\in{\mathbb R}^n:\;u(t,x)\leq 0\bigr\}, \] where \({\mathcal M}_*\) and \({\mathcal M}^*\) are respectively the regularized inner and outer barriers. Some results of the paper extend also to non degenerate elliptic equations of the form \((*)\) via a relaxation procedure, which yields the smallest degenerate elliptic function greater than \(F\).