Degenerate parabolic stochastic partial differential equations

We study the Cauchy problem for a scalar semilinear degenerate parabolic partial differential equation with stochastic forcing. In particular, we are concerned with the well-posedness in any space dimension. We adapt the notion of kinetic solution which is well suited for degenerate parabolic problems and supplies a good technical framework to prove the comparison principle. The proof of existence is based on the vanishing viscosity method: the solution is obtained by a compactness argument as the limit of solutions of nondegenerate approximations. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.