The existence and uniqueness of viscosity solution to a kind of Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equations

Abstract: In this paper, we study the existence and uniqueness of viscosity solutions to a kind of Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equations combined with algebra equations. This HJB equation is related to a stochastic optimal control problem for which the state equation is described by a fully coupled forward-backward stochastic differential equation. By extending Peng's backward semigroup approach to this problem, we obtain the dynamic programming principle and show that the value function is a viscosity solution to this HJB equation. As for the proof of the uniqueness of viscosity solution, the analysis method in Barles, Buckdahn and Pardoux <cite>Baeles-BP</cite> usually does not work for this fully coupled case. With the help of the uniqueness of the solution to FBSDEs, we propose a novel probabilistic approach to study the uniqueness of the solution to this HJB equation. We obtain that the value function is the minimum viscosity solution to this HJB equation. Especially, when the coefficients are independent of the control variable or the solution is smooth, the value function is the unique viscosity solution.