Cascade equation for the discontinuities in the Stefan problem with surface tension

Abstract

The Stefan problem with surface tension is well known to exhibit discontinuities in the associated moving aggregate (i.e., in the domain occupied by the solid), whose structure has only been understood under translational or radial symmetry so far. In this paper, we derive an auxiliary partial differential equation of second-order hyperbolic type, referred to as the cascade equation, that captures said discontinuities in the absence of any symmetry assumptions. Specializing to the one-phase setting, we introduce a novel (global) notion of weak solution to the cascade equation, which is defined as a limit of mean-field game equilibria. For the spatial dimension two, we show the existence of such a weak solution and prove a natural perimeter estimate on the associated moving aggregate.