Stability of Solutions of Parabolic PDEs with Random Drift and Viscosity Limit

Let u _α be the solution of the It? stochastic parabolic Cauchy problem , where ξ is a space—time noise. We prove that u _α depends continuously on α , when the coefficients in L _α converge to those in L ₀ . This result is used to study the diffusion limit for the Cauchy problem in the Stratonovich sense: when the coefficients of L _α tend to 0 the corresponding solutions u _α converge to the solution u ₀ of the degenerate Cauchy problem . These results are based on a criterion for the existence of strong limits in the space of Hida distributions (S) ^* . As a by-product it is proved that weak solutions of the above Cauchy problem are in fact strong solutions. Accepted 22 May 1998