Balance between degenerate elliptic operators and coercive Hamiltonians

Abstract

For $p>1$, we consider the boundary value problem for fully nonlinear degenerate elliptic equations $-\lambda_i(D^2u)+|Du|^p+\gamma u=f(x)$ in bounded domains with Dirichlet or boundary blow-up conditions; here $\lambda_i(D^2u)$ denotes the $i$-th eigenvalue of the Hessian. We study existence and nonexistence of solutions together with the asymptotic behaviour of the solutions when $\gamma$ goes to zero. A priori Lipschitz estimates play an important role. The interplay between the operator's degeneracy and the superlinear growth of the Hamiltonian gives rise to phenomena that are very different depending on which of the two terms dominates, e.g. the ergodic dichotomy takes place only when $i=N$, while new phenomena arise for $i<N$ in which case, under mild conditions, solutions that blow up even in just one point do not exist, and conditions on the size of $f$ must be imposed for the existence of solutions to the Dirichlet problem with homogeneous boundary condition.