Beyond uniqueness: Relaxation calculus of junction conditions for coercive Hamilton-Jacobi equations

Abstract

A junction is a particular network given by the collection of $N\ge 1$ half lines $[0,+\infty)$ glued together at the origin. On such a junction, we consider evolutive Hamilton-Jacobi equations with $N$ coercive Hamiltonians. Furthermore,we consider a general desired junction condition at the origin, given by some monotone function $F_0:\R^N\to \R$.There is existence and uniqueness of solutions which only satisfy weakly the junction condition (at the origin, they satisfy either the desired junction condition or the PDE).We show that those solutions satisfy strongly a relaxed junction condition $\frak R F_0$ (that we can recognize as an effective junction condition). It is remarkable that this relaxed condition can be computed in three different but equivalent ways: 1) using viscosity inequalities, 2) using Godunov fluxes, 3) using Riemann problems.Our result goes beyond uniqueness theory, in the following sense: solutions to two different desired junction conditions $F_0$ and $F_1$ do coincide if $\frak R F_0=\frak R F_1$.