Short-time existence of solutions for mean-field games with congestion

Abstract

We consider time-dependent mean-field games with congestion that are given by a system of a Hamilton-Jacobi equation coupled with a Fokker-Planck equation. The congestion effects make the Hamilton-Jacobi equation singular. These models are motivated by crowd dynamics where agents have difficulty moving in high-density areas. Uniqueness of classical solutions for this problem is well understood. However, existence of classical solutions, was only known in very special cases - stationary problems with quadratic Hamiltonians and some time-dependent explicit examples. Here, we prove short-time existence of $C^\infty$ solutions in the case of sub-quadratic Hamiltonians.