Structural stability of flows via evolutionary Gamma-convergence of weak-type

Abstract

The initial-value problem associated with multi-valued operators in Banach spaces is here reformulated as a minimization principle, extending results of Brezis-Ekeland, Nayroles and Fitzpatrick. At the focus there is the stability of these problems w.r.t.\ perturbations not only of data but also of operators; this is achieved via De Giorgi's $\Gamma$-convergence w.r.t.\ a nonlinear topology of weak type. A notion of evolutionary $\Gamma$-convergence of weak type is also introduced. These results are applied to quasilinear PDEs, including doubly-nonlinear flows.