Improved Moser–Trudinger inequality of Tintarev type in dimension <Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis> and the existence of its extremal functions

Let \(\Omega \) be a smooth bounded domain in \(\mathbb R^n\) with \(n\ge 2\), \(W^{1,n}_0(\Omega )\) be the usual Sobolev space on \(\Omega \) and define \(\lambda _1(\Omega ) = \inf \nolimits _{u\in W^{1,n}_0(\Omega )\setminus \{0\}}\frac{\int _\Omega |\nabla u|^n \mathrm{d}x}{\int _\Omega |u|^n \mathrm{d}x}\). Based on the blow-up analysis method, we shall establish the following improved Moser–Trudinger inequality of Tintarev type

$$\begin{aligned} \sup _{u\in W^{1,n}_0(\Omega ), \int _\Omega |\nabla u|^n \mathrm{{d}}x-\alpha \int _\Omega |u|^n \mathrm{{d}}x \le 1} \int _\Omega \exp (\alpha _{n} |u|^{\frac{n}{n-1}}) \mathrm{{d}}x < \infty , \end{aligned}$$

for any \(0 \le \alpha < \lambda _1(\Omega )\), where \(\alpha _{n} = n \omega _{n-1}^{\frac{1}{n-1}}\) with \(\omega _{n-1}\) being the surface area of the unit sphere in \(\mathbb R^n\). This inequality is stronger than the improved Moser–Trudinger inequality obtained by Adimurthi and Druet (Differ Equ 29:295–322, 2004) in dimension 2 and by Yang (J Funct Anal 239:100–126, 2006) in higher dimension and extends a result of Tintarev (J Funct Anal 266:55–66, 2014) in dimension 2 to higher dimension. We also prove that the supremum above is attained for any \(0< \alpha < \lambda _{1}(\Omega )\). (The case \(\alpha =0\) corresponding to the Moser–Trudinger inequality is well known.)

     

On the <Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis>-Laplacian with Robin boundary conditions and boundary trace theorems

Let \(\Omega \subset \mathbb {R}^\nu \), \(\nu \ge 2\), be a \(C^{1,1}\) domain whose boundary \(\partial \Omega \) is either compact or behaves suitably at infinity. For \(p\in (1,\infty )\) and \(\alpha >0\), define

$$\begin{aligned} \Lambda (\Omega ,p,\alpha ):=\inf _{\begin{array}{c} u\in W^{1,p}(\Omega )\\ u\not \equiv 0 \end{array}}\dfrac{\displaystyle \int _\Omega |\nabla u|^p \mathrm {d} x - \alpha \displaystyle \int _{\partial \Omega } |u|^p\mathrm {d}\sigma }{\displaystyle \int _\Omega |u|^p\mathrm {d} x}, \end{aligned}$$

where \(\mathrm {d}\sigma \) is the surface measure on \(\partial \Omega \). We show the asymptotics

$$\begin{aligned} \Lambda (\Omega ,p,\alpha )=-(p-1)\alpha ^{\frac{p}{p-1}} - (\nu -1)H_\mathrm {max}\, \alpha + o(\alpha ), \quad \alpha \rightarrow +\infty , \end{aligned}$$

where \(H_\mathrm {max}\) is the maximum mean curvature of \(\partial \Omega \). The asymptotic behavior of the associated minimizers is discussed as well. The estimate is then applied to the study of the best constant in a boundary trace theorem for expanding domains, to the norm estimate for extension operators and to related isoperimetric inequalities.

     

A Faber–Krahn Inequality for Solutions of Schrödinger’s Equation on Riemannian Manifolds

We consider a bounded open set with smooth boundary \(\Omega \subset M\) in a Riemannian manifold (M, g), and suppose that there exists a non-trivial function \(u\in C({\overline{\Omega }})\) solving the problem

$$\begin{aligned} -\Delta u=V(x)u, \,\, \text{ in }\,\,\Omega , \end{aligned}$$

in the distributional sense, with \(V\in L^\infty (\Omega )\), where \(u\equiv 0\) on \(\partial \Omega .\) We prove a sharp inequality involving \(||V||_{L^{\infty }(\Omega )}\) and the first eigenvalue of the Laplacian on geodesic balls in simply connected spaces with constant curvature, which slightly generalises the well-known Faber–Krahn isoperimetric inequality. Moreover, in a Riemannian manifold which is not necessarily simply connected, we obtain a lower bound for \(||V||_{L^{\infty }(\Omega )}\) in terms of its isoperimetric or Cheeger constant. As an application, we show that if \(\Omega \) is a domain on a m-dimensional minimal submanifold of \({\mathbb {R}}^n\) which lies in a ball of radius R, then

$$\begin{aligned} ||V||_{L^{\infty }(\Omega )}\ge \left( \frac{m}{2R}\right) ^{2}. \end{aligned}$$

     

Mean curvature bounds and eigenvalues of Robin Laplacians

We consider the Laplacian with attractive Robin boundary conditions,

$$\begin{aligned} Q^\Omega _\alpha u=-\Delta u, \quad \dfrac{\partial u}{\partial n}=\alpha u \text { on } \partial \Omega , \end{aligned}$$

in a class of bounded smooth domains \(\Omega \in \mathbb {R}^\nu \); here \(n\) is the outward unit normal and \(\alpha >0\) is a constant. We show that for each \(j\in \mathbb {N}\) and \(\alpha \rightarrow +\infty \), the \(j\)th eigenvalue \(E_j(Q^\Omega _\alpha )\) has the asymptotics

$$\begin{aligned} E_j(Q^\Omega _\alpha )=-\alpha ^2 -(\nu -1)H_\mathrm {max}(\Omega )\,\alpha +{\mathcal O}(\alpha ^{2/3}), \end{aligned}$$

where \(H_\mathrm {max}(\Omega )\) is the maximum mean curvature at \(\partial \Omega \). The discussion of the reverse Faber-Krahn inequality gives rise to a new geometric problem concerning the minimization of \(H_\mathrm {max}\). In particular, we show that the ball is the strict minimizer of \(H_\mathrm {max}\) among the smooth star-shaped domains of a given volume, which leads to the following result: if \(B\) is a ball and \(\Omega \) is any other star-shaped smooth domain of the same volume, then for any fixed \(j\in \mathbb {N}\) we have \(E_j(Q^B_\alpha )>E_j(Q^\Omega _\alpha )\) for large \(\alpha \). An open question concerning a larger class of domains is formulated.

     

Korn’s inequality and John domains

Let \(\Omega \subset \mathbb {R}^n\), \(n\ge 2\), be a bounded domain satisfying the separation property. We show that the following conditions are equivalent:

1. (i)
   \(\Omega \) is a John domain;
    
2. (ii)
   for a fixed \(p\in (1,\infty )\), the Korn inequality holds for each \(\mathbf {u}\in W^{1,p}(\Omega ,\mathbb {R}^n)\) satisfying \(\int _\Omega \frac{\partial u_i}{\partial x_j}-\frac{\partial u_j}{\partial x_i}\,dx=0\), \(1\le i,j\le n\),

   $$\begin{aligned} \Vert D\mathbf {u}\Vert _{L^p(\Omega )}\le C_K(\Omega , p)\Vert \epsilon (\mathbf {u})\Vert _{L^p(\Omega )}; \qquad (K_{p}) \end{aligned}$$
    
3. (ii’)
   for all \(p\in (1,\infty )\), \((K_p)\) holds on \(\Omega \);
    
4. (iii)
   for a fixed \(p\in (1,\infty )\), for each \(f\in L^p(\Omega )\) with vanishing mean value on \(\Omega \), there exists a solution \(\mathbf {v}\in W^{1,p}_0(\Omega ,\mathbb {R}^n)\) to the equation \(\mathrm {div}\,\mathbf {v}=f\) with

   $$\begin{aligned} \Vert \mathbf {v}\Vert _{W^{1,p}(\Omega ,\mathbb {R}^n)}\le C(\Omega , p)\Vert f\Vert _{L^p(\Omega )};\qquad (DE_p) \end{aligned}$$
    
5. (iii’)
   for all \(p\in (1,\infty )\), \((DE_p)\) holds on \(\Omega \).
    

For domains satisfying the separation property, in particular, for finitely connected domains in the plane, our result provides a geometric characterization of the Korn inequality, and gives positive answers to a question raised by Costabel and Dauge (Arch Ration Mech Anal 217(3):873–898, 2015) and a question raised by Russ (Vietnam J Math 41:369–381, 2013). For the plane, our result is best possible in the sense that, there exist infinitely connected domains which are not John but support Korn’s inequality.

     

Estimates for large solutions of a quasilinear elliptic equation

Let \(\Omega \) be a bounded smooth domain of \(R^{n}\). We study the asymptotic behaviour of the solutions to the equation \(\triangle u-|Du|^{q}=f(u)\) in \(\Omega , 1<q<2,\) which satisfy the boundary condition \(u(x)\rightarrow \infty \) as \(x\rightarrow \partial \Omega \). These solutions are called large or blowup solutions. Near the boundary we give lower and upper bounds for the ratio \(\psi (u)/\delta \), where \(\psi (u) = \int _{u}^{\infty }1/\sqrt{2F}dt\), \(F'=f\), \(\delta =dist(x,\partial \Omega )\) or for the ratio \(u/\delta ^{(2-q)/(1-q)}\). When in particular the ratio \(f/F^{q/2}\)is regular at infinity, we find again known results (Bandle and Giarrusso, in Adv Diff Equ 1, 133–150, 1996; Giarrusso, in Comptes Rendus de l’Acad Sci 331, 777–782 2000).     

Global $$C^{1,\al pha }$$ regularity and e xistence of multi ple solutions for singular p( x)-La placian equations

In this paper we study the following singular p(x)-Laplacian problem

$$\begin{aligned} \left\{ \begin{array}{l@{\quad }l} - \text{ div } \left( |\nabla u|^{p(x)-2} \nabla u\right) =\frac{ \lambda }{u^{\beta (x)}}+u^{q(x)}, &{} \text{ in }\quad \Omega , \\ u>0, &{} \text{ in }\quad \Omega , \\ u=0, &{} \text{ on }\quad \partial \Omega , \end{array}\right. \end{aligned}$$

where \(\Omega \) is a bounded domain in \(\mathbb {R}^N\), \(N\ge 2\), with smooth boundary \(\partial \Omega \), \(\beta \in C^1(\bar{\Omega })\) with \( 0< \beta (x) <1\), \(p\in C^1(\bar{\Omega })\), \(q \in C(\bar{\Omega })\) with \(p(x)>1\), \(p(x)< q(x) +1 <p^*(x)\) for \(x \in \bar{\Omega }\), where \( p^*(x)= \frac{Np(x)}{N-p(x)} \) for \(p(x) <N\) and \( p^*(x)= \infty \) for \( p(x) \ge N\). We establish \(C^{1,\alpha }\) regularity of weak solutions of the problem and strong comparison principle. Based on these two results, we prove the existence of multiple (at least two) positive solutions for a certain range of \(\lambda \).

     

The log-behavior of $$\root n \of {p(n)}$$ and $$\root n \of {p(n)/n}$$p(n)/nn

Let p(n) denote the partition function and let \(\Delta \) be the difference operator with respect to n. In this paper, we obtain a lower bound for \(\Delta ^2\log \root n-1 \of {p(n-1)/(n-1)}\), leading to a proof of a conjecture of Sun on the log-convexity of \(\{\root n \of {p(n)/n}\}_{n\ge 60}\). Using the same argument, it can be shown that for any real number \(\alpha \), there exists an integer \(n(\alpha )\) such that the sequence \(\{\root n \of {p(n)/n^{\alpha }}\}_{n\ge n(\alpha )}\) is log-convex. Moreover, we show that \(\lim \limits _{n \rightarrow +\infty }n^{\frac{5}{2}}\Delta ^2\log \root n \of {p(n)}=3\pi /\sqrt{24}\). Finally, by finding an upper bound for \(\Delta ^2 \log \root n-1 \of {p(n-1)}\), we establish an inequality on the ratio \(\frac{\root n-1 \of {p(n-1)}}{\root n \of {p(n)}}\).     

Eigenvalue Counting Function for Robin Laplacians on Conical Domains

We study the discrete spectrum of the Robin Laplacian \(Q^{\Omega }_\alpha \) in \(L^2(\Omega )\), \(u\mapsto -\Delta u, \quad D_n u=\alpha u \text { on }\partial \Omega \), where \(D_n\) is the outer unit normal derivative and \(\Omega \subset {\mathbb {R}}^{3}\) is a conical domain with a regular cross-section \(\Theta \subset {\mathbb {S}}^2\), n is the outer unit normal, and \(\alpha >0\) is a fixed constant. It is known from previous papers that the bottom of the essential spectrum of \(Q^{\Omega }_\alpha \) is \(-\alpha ^2\) and that the finiteness of the discrete spectrum depends on the geometry of the cross-section. We show that the accumulation of the discrete spectrum of \(Q^\Omega _\alpha \) is determined by the discrete spectrum of an effective Hamiltonian defined on the boundary and far from the origin. By studying this model operator, we prove that the number of eigenvalues of \(Q^{\Omega }_\alpha \) in \((-\infty ,-\alpha ^2-\lambda )\), with \(\lambda >0\), behaves for \(\lambda \rightarrow 0\) as

$$\begin{aligned} \dfrac{\alpha ^2}{8\pi \lambda } \int _{\partial \Theta } \kappa _+(s)^2\mathrm {d}s +o\left( \frac{1}{\lambda }\right) , \end{aligned}$$

where \(\kappa _+\) is the positive part of the geodesic curvature of the cross-section boundary.

     

Hölder continuity for continuous solutions of the singular minimal surface equation with arbitrary zero set

In this paper we prove the following theorem: Let \(\Omega \subset \mathbb {R}^{n}\) be a bounded open set, \(\psi \in C_{c}^{2}(\mathbb {R}^{n})\), \(\psi > 0\) on \(\partial \Omega \), be given boundary values and u a nonnegative solution to the problem

$$\begin{aligned}&u \in C^{0}(\overline{\Omega }) \cap C^{2}(\{u> 0\}) \\&u = \psi \quad \text { on } \; \partial \Omega \\&{\text {div}} \left( \frac{Du}{\sqrt{1 + |Du|^{2}}}\right) = \frac{\alpha }{u \sqrt{1 + |Du|^{2}}} \quad \text { in } \; \{u > 0\} \end{aligned}$$

where \(\alpha > 0\) is a given constant. Then \(u \in C^{0, \frac{1}{2}} (\overline{\Omega })\). Furthermore we prove strict mean convexity of the free boundary \(\partial \{u = 0\}\) provided \(\partial \{u = 0\}\) is assumed to be of class \(C^{2}\) and \(\alpha \ge 1\).

     

A Sawyer-type sufficient condition for the weighted Poincaré inequality

In this paper we prove the Poincaré-type weighted inequality

$$\begin{aligned} \Vert v^{1/q} f \Vert _{L^q(\Omega )} \le C \Vert \omega ^{1/p} \nabla f \Vert _{L^p(\Omega )}, \quad q\ge p>1, \end{aligned}$$

for a locally Lipschitz function f with a weighted mean equal to zero over a convex bounded domain \(\Omega \); here the weights v, \(\omega \) are positive measurable functions which satisfy a certain compatibility condition. This result is a generalization of the well-known weighted Poincaré inequality to the case of more general weights in the sense that we do not use the traditional conditions of high summability \(v,\, \omega ^{-\frac{1}{p-1}}\in L^{r,loc}\) with \(r>1\) for \(q=p\) or the reverse doubling condition on the function v for \(q>p\) . In other words, a Sawyer type sufficient condition on weight functions is established.

     

Couplings of Brownian Motions of Deterministic Distance in Model Spaces of Constant Curvature

We consider the model space \(\mathbb {M}^{n}_{K}\) of constant curvature K and dimension \(n\ge 1\) (Euclidean space for \(K=0\), sphere for \(K>0\) and hyperbolic space for \(K<0\)), and we show that given a function \(\rho :[0,\infty )\rightarrow [0, \infty )\) with \(\rho (0)=\mathrm {dist}(x,y)\) there exists a coadapted coupling (X(t), Y(t)) of Brownian motions on \(\mathbb {M}^{n}_{K}\) starting at (x, y) such that \(\rho (t)=\mathrm {dist}(X(t),Y(t))\) for every \(t\ge 0\) if and only if \(\rho \) is continuous and satisfies for almost every \(t\ge 0\) the differential inequality

$$\begin{aligned} -(n-1)\sqrt{K}\tan \left( \tfrac{\sqrt{K}\rho (t)}{2}\right) \le \rho '(t)\le -(n-1)\sqrt{K}\tan \left( \tfrac{\sqrt{K}\rho (t)}{2}\right) +\tfrac{2(n-1)\sqrt{K}}{\sin (\sqrt{K}\rho (t))}. \end{aligned}$$

In other words, we characterize all coadapted couplings of Brownian motions on the model space \(\mathbb {M}^{n}_{K}\) for which the distance between the processes is deterministic. In addition, the construction of the coupling is explicit for every choice of \(\rho \) satisfying the above hypotheses.

     

Semilinear elliptic equations with Hardy potential and subcritical source term

Let \(\Omega \) be a smooth bounded domain in \({\mathbb {R}}^N\) (\(N>2\)) and \(\delta (x):=\text {dist}\,(x,\partial \Omega )\). Assume \(\mu \in {\mathbb {R}}_+, \nu \) is a nonnegative finite measure on \(\partial \Omega \) and \(g \in C(\Omega \times {\mathbb {R}}_+)\). We study positive solutions of

$$\begin{aligned} -\Delta u - \frac{\mu }{\delta ^2} u = g(x,u) \text { in } \Omega , \qquad \text {tr}^*(u)=\nu . \end{aligned}$$

(P)

Here \(\text {tr}^*(u)\) denotes the normalized boundary trace of u which was recently introduced by Marcus and Nguyen (Ann Inst H Poincaré Anal Non Linéaire, 34, 69–88, 2017). We focus on the case \(0<\mu < C_H(\Omega )\) (the Hardy constant for \(\Omega \)) and provide qualitative properties of positive solutions of (P). When \(g(x,u)=u^q\) with \(q>0\), we prove that there is a critical value \(q^*\) (depending only on \(N, \mu \)) for (P) in the sense that if \(q<q^*\) then (P) possesses a solution under a smallness assumption on \(\nu \), but if \(q \ge q^*\) this problem admits no solution with isolated boundary singularity. Existence result is then extended to a more general setting where g is subcritical [see (1.28)]. We also investigate the case where g is linear or sublinear and give an existence result for (P).

     

Normalized bound states for the nonlinear Schrödinger equation in bounded domains

Given \(\rho >0\), we study the elliptic problem

$$\begin{aligned} \text {find } (U,\lambda )\in H^1_0(\Omega )\times {\mathbb {R}}\text { such that } {\left\{ \begin{array}{ll} -\Delta U+\lambda U=|U|^{p-1}U\\ \int _{\Omega } U^2\, dx=\rho , \end{array}\right. } \end{aligned}$$

where \(\Omega \subset {\mathbb {R}}^N\) is a bounded domain and \(p>1\) is Sobolev-subcritical, searching for conditions (about \(\rho \), N and p) for the existence of solutions. By the Gagliardo-Nirenberg inequality it follows that, when p is \(L^2\)-subcritical, i.e. \(1<p<1+4/N\), the problem admits solutions for every \(\rho >0\). In the \(L^2\)-critical and supercritical case, i.e. when \(1+4/N \le p < 2^*-1\), we show that, for any \(k\in {\mathbb {N}}\), the problem admits solutions having Morse index bounded above by k only if \(\rho \) is sufficiently small. Next we provide existence results for certain ranges of \(\rho \), which can be estimated in terms of the Dirichlet eigenvalues of \(-\Delta \) in \(H^1_0(\Omega )\), extending to changing sign solutions and to general domains some results obtained in Noris et al. in Anal. PDE 7:1807–1838, 2014 for positive solutions in the ball.

     

ANCOVA: a heteroscedastic global test when there is curvature and two covariates

For two independent groups, let \(M_j(\mathbf {X})\) be some conditional measure of location for the jth group associated with some random variable Y given \(\mathbf {X}=(X_1, X_2)\). Let \(\Omega =\{\mathbf {X}_1, \ldots , \mathbf {X}_K\}\) be a set of K points to be determined. An extant technique can be used to test \(H_0\): \(M_1(\mathbf {X})=M_2(\mathbf {X})\) for each \(\mathbf {X} \in \Omega \) without making any parametric assumption about \(M_j(\mathbf {X})\). But there are two general reasons to suspect that the method can have relatively low power. The paper reports simulation results on an alternative approach that is designed to test the global hypothesis \(H_0\): \(M_1(\mathbf {X})=M_2(\mathbf {X})\) for all \(\mathbf {X} \in \Omega \). The main result is that the new method offers a distinct power advantage. Using data from the Well Elderly 2 study, it is illustrated that the alternative method can make a practical difference in terms of detecting a difference between two groups.     

Weyl formula for the negative dissipative eigenvalues of Maxwell’s equations

Let \(V(t) = e^{tG_b},\, t \ge 0,\) be the semigroup generated by Maxwell’s equations in an exterior domain \(\Omega \subset {\mathbb R}^3\) with dissipative boundary condition \(E_{tan}- \gamma (x) (\nu \wedge B_{tan}) = 0, \gamma (x) > 0, \forall x \in \Gamma = \partial \Omega .\) We study the case when \(\Omega = \{x \in {\mathbb R}^3:\, |x| > 1\}\) and \(\gamma \ne 1\) is a constant. We establish a Weyl formula for the counting function of the negative real eigenvalues of \(G_b.\)     

Littlewood–Paley Theory for Triangle Buildings

For the natural two-parameter filtration \(\left( {\mathcal {F}_\lambda }: {\lambda \in P}\right) \) on the boundary of a triangle building, we define a maximal function and a square function and show their boundedness on \(L^p(\Omega _0)\) for \(p \in (1, \infty )\). At the end, we consider \(L^p(\Omega _0)\) boundedness of martingale transforms. If the building is of \({\text {GL}}(3, \mathbb {Q}_p)\), then \(\Omega _0\) can be identified with p-adic Heisenberg group.     

Multiple positive solutions of the stationary Keller–Segel system

We consider the stationary Keller–Segel equation

$$\begin{aligned} {\left\{ \begin{array}{ll} -\Delta v+v=\lambda e^v, \quad v>0 \quad &{} \text {in }\Omega ,\\ \partial _\nu v=0 &{}\text {on } \partial \Omega , \end{array}\right. } \end{aligned}$$

where \(\Omega \) is a ball. In the regime \(\lambda \rightarrow 0\), we study the radial bifurcations and we construct radial solutions by a gluing variational method. For any given \(n\in \mathbb {N}_0\), we build a solution having multiple layers at \(r_1,\ldots ,r_n\) by which we mean that the solutions concentrate on the spheres of radii \(r_i\) as \(\lambda \rightarrow 0\) (for all \(i=1,\ldots ,n\)). A remarkable fact is that, in opposition to previous known results, the layers of the solutions do not accumulate to the boundary of \(\Omega \) as \(\lambda \rightarrow 0\). Instead they satisfy an optimal partition problem in the limit.

     

Partial regularity and smooth topology-preserving approximations of rough domains

For a bounded domain \(\Omega \subset {\mathbb R}^m, m\ge 2,\) of class \(C^0\), the properties are studied of fields of ‘good directions’, that is the directions with respect to which \(\partial \Omega \) can be locally represented as the graph of a continuous function. For any such domain there is a canonical smooth field of good directions defined in a suitable neighbourhood of \(\partial \Omega \), in terms of which a corresponding flow can be defined. Using this flow it is shown that \(\Omega \) can be approximated from the inside and the outside by diffeomorphic domains of class \(C^\infty \). Whether or not the image of a general continuous field of good directions (pseudonormals) defined on \(\partial \Omega \) is the whole of \(S^{m-1}\) is shown to depend on the topology of \(\Omega \). These considerations are used to prove that if \(m=2,3\), or if \(\Omega \) has nonzero Euler characteristic, there is a point \(P\in \partial \Omega \) in the neighbourhood of which \(\partial \Omega \) is Lipschitz. The results provide new information even for more regular domains, with Lipschitz or smooth boundaries.