Existence and uniqueness to the Cauchy problem for linear and semilinear parabolic equations with local conditions

We consider the Cauchy problem in ℝd for a class of semilinear parabolic partial differential equations that arises in some stochastic control problems. We assume that the coefficients are unbounded and locally Lipschitz, not necessarily differentiable, with continuous data and local uniform ellipticity. We construct a classical solution by approximation with linear parabolic equations. The linear equations involved can not be solved with the traditional results. Therefore, we construct a classical solution to the linear Cauchy problem under the same hypotheses on the coefficients for the semilinear equation. Our approach is using stochastic differential equations and parabolic differential equations in bounded domains. Finally, we apply the results to a stochastic optimal consumption problem