Comparison Principles for Second Order Elliptic/Parabolic Equations with Discontinuities in the Gradient Compatible with Finsler Norms

Abstract

This paper is about elliptic and parabolic partial differential operators with discontinuities in the gradient which are compatible with a Finsler norm in a sense to be made precise. Examples of this type of problems arise in a number of contexts, most notably the recent work of Chatterjee and the second author [7] on scaling limits of discrete surface growth models as well as $L^{\infty}-$variational problems. Building on the approach of Ishii [16], new comparison results are proven within a unified framework that includes a number of previous results as special cases.