Min-max representations of viscosity solutions of Hamilton-Jacobi equations and applications in rare-event simulation

In this paper a duality relation between the Ma\~{n}\'e potential and Mather's action functional is derived in the context of convex and state-dependent Hamiltonians. The duality relation is used to obtain min-max representations of viscosity solutions of first order Hamilton-Jacobi equations. These min-max representations naturally suggest class\-es of subsolutions of Hamilton-Jacobi equations that arise in the theory of large deviations. The subsolutions, in turn, are good candidates for designing efficient rare-event simulation algorithms.