Loss of quasiconvexity in the periodic homogenization of viscous Hamilton-Jacobi equations

Abstract: We show that, in the periodic homogenization of uniformly elliptic Hamilton-Jacobi equations in any dimension, the effective Hamiltonian does not necessarily inherit the quasiconvexity property (in the momentum variables) of the original Hamiltonian. This observation is in sharp contrast with the first order case, where homogenization is known to preserve quasiconvexity. We also show that the loss of quasiconvexity is, in a way, generic: when the spatial dimension is $1$, every convex function $G$ can be modified on an arbitrarily small open interval so that the new function $\tilde{G}$ is quasiconvex and, for some $1$-periodic and Lipschitz continuous $V$, the effective Hamiltonian arising from the homogenization of the uniformly elliptic Hamilton-Jacobi equation with the Hamiltonian $H(p,x)=\tilde{G}(p)+V(x)$ is not quasiconvex.