English

Bellman Equations with Sub-Lipschitz Hessians

Analysis of PDEs 2026-07-13 v1

Abstract

We construct homogeneous solutions with non-Lipschitz Hessian for finite, constant-coefficient Bellman equations. First, for every σ(0,1)\sigma\in(0,1), we find two uniformly elliptic matrices A1,A2S4A_1,A_2\in\mathcal{S}^4 and a nonzero (2+σ)(2+\sigma)-homogeneous solution uu of max{tr(A1D2u),tr(A2D2u)}=0in R4.\max\bigl\{{\rm tr}\,(A_1D^2u),{\rm tr}\,(A_2D^2u)\bigr\}=0 \qquad\text{in }\mathbb{R}^4. Second, in R2\mathbb{R}^2 we construct three matrices satisfying Id2Aj3Id2{\rm Id}_2\leq A_j\leq3{\rm Id}_2 for which the corresponding Bellman equation admits a homogeneous solution with a non-Lipschitz Hessian. In particular, solutions to convex fully nonlinear uniformly elliptic equations are not in C2,1C^{2,1}, and not even in C2,1εC^{2, 1-\varepsilon} for ε>0\varepsilon > 0 small.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.11618,
  title  = {Bellman Equations with Sub-Lipschitz Hessians},
  author = {Xavier Fernández-Real},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.11618},
  year   = {2026}
}