A new proof for the equivalence of weak and viscosity solutions for the $p$-Laplace equation

Abstract

In this paper, we give a new proof for the fact that the distributional weak solutions and the viscosity solutions of the $p$-Laplace equation $-\diver(\abs{Du}^{p-2}Du)=0$ coincide. Our proof is more direct and transparent than the original one by Juutinen, Lindqvist and Manfredi \cite{jlm}, which relied on the full uniqueness machinery of the theory of viscosity solutions. We establish a similar result also for the solutions of the non-homogeneous version of the $p$-Laplace equation.