Vanishing discount selection for constant-sign local perturbations of periodic Hamiltonians

Abstract

We study the vanishing discount selection problem for critical Hamil\-ton--Jacobi equations posed on ${\mathbb R}^d$ with Hamiltonian $G=H-V$, where $H$ is continuous, periodic in space, convex and superlinear in the momentum, and $V$ is a compactly supported potential of constant sign. For $V\leqslant0$, we prove local uniform convergence of the discounted solutions to a distinguished critical solution, which we characterize in terms of Mather measures and of the solution selected by the unperturbed periodic problem. The proof relies on a decomposition of limiting discounted measures into a retained component and a periodic component accounting for the mass lost at infinity. For $V\geqslant0$, we establish convergence under the additional assumption that the unperturbed selected solution has zero average with respect to every periodic Mather measure. We also give explicit examples in which the discounted solutions converge, but natural formulas for the candidate limit fail to identify the selected solution.