A new notion of a viscosity solution for Eikonal equations in a general metric space is introduced. A comparison principle is established. The existence of a unique solution is shown by constructing a value function of the corresponding optimal control theory. The theory applies to infinite dimensional setting as well as topological networks, surfaces with singularities.

Abstract. A general anisotropic curvature flow equation with singular interfacial energy and spatially inhomogeneous driving force is considered for a curve given by the graph of a periodic function. We prove that the initial value problem admits a unique global-in-time viscosity solution for a general periodic continuous initial datum. The notion of a viscosity solution used here is the same as proposed by Giga, Giga and Rybka, who established a comparison principle. We construct the global-in-time solution by careful adaptation of Perron's method.

We investigate the asymptotic behavior of a solution of a Hamilton-Jacobi equation defined on a general metric space. Our results include general stability property and large time behavior of the solution. We argue from the viewpoint of viscosity solutions theory and adopt the notion of solution recently introduced by Gangbo and Święch to the Hamilton-Jacobi equation on a geodesic space.

We study a cell problem arising in homogenization for a Hamilton-Jacobi equation whose Hamiltonian is not coercive. We introduce a generalized notion of effective Hamiltonians by approximating the equation and characterize the solvability of the cell problem in terms of the generalized effective Hamiltonian. Under some sufficient conditions, the result is applied to the associated homogenization problem. We also show that homogenization for non-coercive equations fails in general.