Regularity lifting of weak solutions for nonlinear sub-Laplace equations on homogeneous groups

Let G be a homogeneous group, and let X ₁, X ₂, … , X _m be left invariant real vector fields being homogeneous of degree one on G. We consider the following Dirichlet boundary value problem of the sub-Laplace equation involving the critical exponent and singular term: $$\left\{\begin{array}{ll}-\sum_{j=1}^{m}X_j^2u(x)-\frac{a}{\|x\|^\nu}u(x)=u^{\frac{Q+2}{Q-2}}(x), x\in\Omega,\\ u(x)=0, \quad\quad\quad\quad\quad\quad\quad\quad\quad\quad\quad\quad\,\,\,\, x\in \partial\Omega,\end{array}\right.$$ where ${\Omega\subset G}$ is a bounded domain with smooth boundary and ${\mathbf{0}\in\Omega}$ , Q is the homogeneous dimension of G, ${a\in \mathbb{R},\ \nu <2 }$ . We boost u to ${L^p(\Omega)}$ for any ${1\leq p < \infty}$ if ${u\in S^{1,2}_0(\Omega)}$ is a weak solution of the problem above.     

Isolated boundary singularities of semilinear elliptic equations

Given a smooth domain ${\Omega\subset\mathbb{R}^N}$ such that ${0 \in \partial\Omega}$ and given a nonnegative smooth function ?? on ???, we study the behavior near 0 of positive solutions of ???u?=?u ^q in ?? such that u =? ?? on ???\{0}. We prove that if ${\frac{N+1}{N-1} < q < \frac{N+2}{N-2}}$ , then ${u(x)\leq C |x|^{-\frac{2}{q-1}}}$ and we compute the limit of ${|x|^{\frac{2}{q-1}} u(x)}$ as x ?? 0. We also investigate the case ${q= \frac{N+1}{N-1}}$ . The proofs rely on the existence and uniqueness of solutions of related equations on spherical domains.     

Blow-up rates and uniqueness of large solutions for elliptic equations with nonlinear gradient term and singular or degenerate weights

This paper deals with the blow-up rate and uniqueness of large solutions of the elliptic equation ${\Delta u = b(x)f(u)+c(x)g(u)|\nabla u|^q}$ in ${\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^N}$ , where q > 0, f(u) and g(u) are regularly varying functions at infinity, and the weight functions ${b(x),\,c(x) \in C^\alpha(\Omega,\,\mathbb{R}^+)}$ , 0 < α < 1, may be singular or degenerate on the boundary ${\partial\Omega}$ . Combining the regular variation theoretic approach of Cîrstea–R?dulescu and the systematic approach of Bandle–Giarrusso, we are able to improve and generalize most of the previously available results in the literature.     

Extinction profile of the logarithmic diffusion equation

Let ${N \geq 3}$ and u be the solution of u _t = Δ log u in ${\mathbb{R}^N \times (0, T)}$ with initial value u ₀ satisfying ${B_{k_1}(x, 0) \leq u_{0} \leq B_{k_2}(x, 0)}$ for some constants k ₁ > k ₂ > 0 where ${B_k(x, t) = 2(N - 2)(T - t)_{+}^{N/(N - 2)}/(k + (T - t)_{+}^{2/(N - 2)}|x|^{2})}$ is the Barenblatt solution for the equation and ${u_0 - B_{k_0} \in L^{1}(\mathbb{R}^{N})}$ for some constant k ₀ > 0 if ${N \geq 4}$ . We give a new different proof on the uniform convergence and ${L^1(\mathbb{R}^N)}$ convergence of the rescaled function ${\tilde{u}(x, s) = (T - t)^{-N/(N - 2)}u(x/(T - t)^{-1/(N - 2)}, t), s = -{\rm log}(T - t)}$ , on ${\mathbb{R}^N}$ to the rescaled Barenblatt solution ${\tilde{B}_{k_0}(x) = 2(N - 2)/(k_0 + |x|^{2})}$ for some k ₀ > 0 as ${s \rightarrow \infty}$ . When ${N \geq 4, 0 \leq u_0(x) \leq B_{k_0}(x, 0)}$ in ${\mathbb{R}^N}$ , and ${|u_0(x) - B_{k_0}(x, 0)| \leq f \in L^{1}(\mathbb{R}^{N})}$ for some constant k ₀ > 0 and some radially symmetric function f, we also prove uniform convergence and convergence in some weighted L ¹ space in ${\mathbb{R}^N}$ of the rescaled solution ${\tilde{u}(x, s)}$ to ${\tilde{B}_{k_0}(x)}$ as ${s \rightarrow \infty}$ .     

Young measures generated by sequences in Morrey spaces

Let ${\Omega\subset\mathbb{R}^n}$ be open and bounded. For 1 ≤ p < ∞ and 0 ≤ λ < n, we give a characterization of Young measures generated by sequences of functions ${\{{\bf f}_j\}_{j=1}^\infty}$ uniformly bounded in the Morrey space ${L^{p,\lambda}(\Omega;\mathbb{R}^N)}$ with ${\{\left|{{\bf f}_j}\right|^p\}_{j=1}^\infty}$ equiintegrable. We then treat the case that each f _j = ? u _j for some ${{\bf u}_j\in W^{1,p}(\Omega;\mathbb{R}^N)}$ . As an application of our results, we consider the functional $${\bf u} \mapsto \int\limits_{\Omega}f({\bf x}, {\bf u}({\bf x}), {\bf {\nabla}}{\bf u}({\bf x})){\rm d}{\bf x},$$ and provide conditions that guarantee the existence of a minimizing sequence with gradients uniformly bounded in ${L^{p,\lambda}(\Omega;\mathbb{R}^{N\times n})}$ .     

Full regularity of a free boundary problem with two phases

Let ?? be a bounded domain in ${\mathbb{R}^{n}, n\geq2}$ . We use ${\mathcal{M}_{\Omega}}$ to denote the collection of all pairs of (A, u) such that ${A\subset\Omega}$ is a set of finite perimeter and ${u\in H^{1}\left( \Omega\right)}$ satisfies $$u\left( x\right) =0\quad\text{a.e.}x\in A.$$ We consider the energy functional $$E_{\Omega}\left( A,u\right) =\int\limits_{\Omega}\left\vert\triangledown u\right\vert ^{2}+P_{\Omega}\left( A\right)$$ defined on ${\mathcal{M}_{\Omega}}$ , where P _??(A) denotes the perimeter of A inside ??. Let ${\left( A,u\right)\in\mathcal{M}_{\Omega}}$ be a minimizer with volume constraint. Our main result is that when n????7, u is locally Lipschitz and the free boundary ?A is analytic in ??.     

Local {W^{2,m(\cdot)}_{loc}}regularity for p(.)-Laplace equations

We study ${W^{2,m(\cdot)}_{loc}}$ regularity for local weak solutions of p(·)-Laplace equations where ${p\in C^1(\Omega) \cap C(\overline{\Omega})}$ and ${\min_{x\in \overline{\Omega}} p(x) > 1}$ .     

On functions whose symmetric part of gradient agree and a generalization of Reshetnyak’s compactness theorem

We consider the following question: Given a connected open domain ${\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^n}$ , suppose ${u, v : \Omega \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^n}$ with det ${(\nabla u) > 0}$ , det ${(\nabla v) > 0}$ a.e. are such that ${\nabla u^T(x)\nabla u(x) = \nabla v(x)^T \nabla v(x)}$ a.e. , does this imply a global relation of the form ${\nabla v(x) = R\nabla u(x)}$ a.e. in Ω where ${R \in SO(n)}$ ? If u, v are C ¹ it is an exercise to see this true, if ${u, v\in W^{1,1}}$ we show this is false. In Theorem 1 we prove this question has a positive answer if ${v \in W^{1,1}}$ and ${u \in W^{1,n}}$ is a mapping of L ^p integrable dilatation for p > n ? 1. These conditions are sharp in two dimensions and this result represents a generalization of the corollary to Liouville’s theorem that states that the differential inclusion ${\nabla u \in SO(n)}$ can only be satisfied by an affine mapping. Liouville’s corollary for rotations has been generalized by Reshetnyak who proved convergence of gradients to a fixed rotation for any weakly converging sequence ${v_k \in W^{1,1}}$ for which $$\int \limits_{\Omega} {\rm dist}(\nabla v_k, SO(n))dz \rightarrow 0 \, {\rm as} \, k \rightarrow \infty.$$ Let S(·) denote the (multiplicative) symmetric part of a matrix. In Theorem 3 we prove an analogous result to Theorem 1 for any pair of weakly converging sequences ${v_k \in W^{1,p}}$ and ${u_k \in W^{1,\frac{p(n-1)}{p-1}}}$ (where ${p \in [1, n]}$ and the sequence (u _k ) has its dilatation pointwise bounded above by an L ^r integrable function, r > n ? 1) that satisfy ${\int_{\Omega} |S(\nabla u_k) - S(\nabla v_k)|^p dz \rightarrow 0}$ as k → ∞ and for which the sign of the det ${(\nabla v_k)}$ tends to 1 in L ¹. This result contains Reshetnyak’s theorem as the special case (u _k ) ≡ Id, p = 1.     

Boundary behavior of large solutions to elliptic equations with nonlinear gradient terms

In this paper, we mainly study the asymptotic behavior of solutions to the following problems ${\triangle u \pm a(x)| \nabla u|^{q} = b(x)f(u), x \in \Omega, \ u|_{\partial \Omega} = + \infty}$ , where Ω is a bounded domain with a smooth boundary in ${\mathbb{R}^{N} (N \geq 2)}$ , q >  0, ${a \in C^{\alpha}(\bar{\Omega})}$ is positive in Ω, and ${b \in C^{\alpha}(\bar{\Omega})}$ is nonnegative in Ω and may be vanishing on the boundary. We assume that f is Γ-varying at ∞, whose variation at ∞ is not regular. Our analysis is based on the sub-supersolution method and Karamata regular variation theory.     

A priori estimates for a class of degenerate elliptic equations

In this paper we investigate the regularity of solutions for the following degenerate partial differential equation $$\left \{\begin{array}{ll} -\Delta_p u + u = f \qquad {\rm in} \,\Omega,\\ \frac{\partial u}{\partial \nu} = 0 \qquad \qquad \,\,\,\,\,\,\,\,\,\, {\rm on} \,\partial \Omega, \end{array}\right.$$ when ${f \in L^q(\Omega), p > 2}$ and q ≥ 2. If u is a weak solution in ${W^{1, p}(\Omega)}$ , we obtain estimates for u in the Nikolskii space ${\mathcal{N}^{1+2/r,r}(\Omega)}$ , where r = q(p ? 2) + 2, in terms of the L ^q norm of f. In particular, due to imbedding theorems of Nikolskii spaces into Sobolev spaces, we conclude that ${\|u\|^r_{W^{1 + 2/r - \epsilon, r}(\Omega)} \leq C(\|f\|_{L^q(\Omega)}^q + \| f\|^{r}_{L^q(\Omega)} + \|f\|^{2r/p}_{L^q(\Omega)})}$ for every ${\epsilon > 0}$ sufficiently small. Moreover, we prove that the resolvent operator is continuous and compact in ${W^{1,r}(\Omega)}$ .     

Singular limits for Liouville-type equations on the flat two-torus

We consider the problem $$\begin{aligned} -\Delta u=\varepsilon ^{2}e^{u}- \frac{1}{|\Omega |}\int _\Omega \varepsilon ^{2} e^{u}+ {4\pi N\over |\Omega |} - 4 \pi N\delta _p, \quad \text{ in} {\Omega }, \quad \int _\Omega u=0 \end{aligned}$$ in a flat two-torus $\Omega $ with periodic boundary conditions, where $\varepsilon >0,\,|\Omega |$ is the area of the $\Omega $ , $N>0$ and $\delta _p$ is a Dirac mass at $p\in \Omega $ . We prove that if $1\le m<N+1$ then there exists a family of solutions $\{u_\varepsilon \}_{\varepsilon }$ such that $\varepsilon ^{2}e^{u_\varepsilon }\rightharpoonup 8\pi \sum _{i=1}^m\delta _{q_i}$ as $\varepsilon \rightarrow 0$ in measure sense for some different points $q_{1}, \ldots , q_{m}$ . Furthermore, points $q_i$ , $i=1,\dots ,m$ are different from $p$ .     

Uniqueness of integrable solutions to {\nabla \zeta=G \zeta, \zeta|_\Gamma = 0} for integrable tensor coefficients G and applications to elasticity

Let ${\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^{N}}$ be a Lipschitz domain and Γ be a relatively open and non-empty subset of its boundary ${\partial\Omega}$ . We show that the solution to the linear first-order system $$\nabla \zeta = G\zeta, \, \, \zeta|_\Gamma = 0 \quad \quad \quad (1)$$ is unique if ${G \in \textsf{L}^{1}(\Omega; \mathbb{R}^{(N \times N) \times N})}$ and ${\zeta \in \textsf{W}^{1,1}(\Omega; \mathbb{R}^{N})}$ . As a consequence, we prove $$||| \cdot ||| : \textsf{C}_{o}^{\infty}(\Omega, \Gamma; \mathbb{R}^{3}) \rightarrow [0, \infty), \, \, u \mapsto \parallel {\rm sym}(\nabla uP^{-1})\parallel_{\textsf{L}^{2}(\Omega)}$$ to be a norm for ${P \in \textsf{L}^{\infty}(\Omega; \mathbb{R}^{3 \times 3})}$ with Curl ${P \in \textsf{L}^{p}(\Omega; \mathbb{R}^{3 \times 3})}$ , Curl ${P^{-1} \in \textsf{L}^{q}(\Omega; \mathbb{R}^{3 \times 3})}$ for some p, q > 1 with 1/p + 1/q = 1 as well as det ${P \geq c^+ > 0}$ . We also give a new and different proof for the so-called ‘infinitesimal rigid displacement lemma’ in curvilinear coordinates: Let ${\Phi \in \textsf{H}^{1}(\Omega; \mathbb{R}^{3})}$ satisfy sym ${(\nabla\Phi^\top\nabla\Psi) = 0}$ for some ${\Psi \in \textsf{W}^{1,\infty}(\Omega; \mathbb{R}^{3}) \cap \textsf{H}^{2}(\Omega; \mathbb{R}^{3})}$ with det ${\nabla\Psi \geq c^+ > 0}$ . Then, there exist a constant translation vector ${a \in \mathbb{R}^{3}}$ and a constant skew-symmetric matrix ${A \in \mathfrak{so}(3)}$ , such that ${\Phi = A\Psi + a}$ .     

Infinitely many solutions for an elliptic problem involving critical Sobolev growth and Hardy potential

In this paper, we will prove the existence of infinitely many solutions for the following elliptic problem with critical Sobolev growth and a Hardy potential: $$-\Delta u-\frac{\mu}{|x|^2}u = |u|^{2^{\ast}-2}u+a u\quad {\rm in}\;\Omega,\quad u=0 \quad {\rm on}\; \partial\Omega,\qquad (*)$$ under the assumptions that N ≥ 7, ${\mu\in \left[0,\frac{(N-2)^2}4-4\right)}$ and a > 0, where ${2^{\ast}=\frac{2N}{N-2}}$ , and Ω is an open bounded domain in ${\mathbb{R}^N}$ which contains the origin. To achieve this goal, we consider the following perturbed problem of (*), which is of subcritical growth, $$-\Delta u-\frac{\mu}{|x|^2}u = |u|^{2^{\ast}-2-\varepsilon_n}u+au \quad {\rm in}\,\Omega, \quad u=0 \quad {\rm on}\;\partial\Omega,\qquad(\ast\ast)_n$$ where ${\varepsilon_{n} > 0}$ is small and ${\varepsilon_n \to 0}$ as n → + ∞. By the critical point theory for the even functionals, for each fixed ${\varepsilon_{n} > 0}$ small, (**) _n has a sequence of solutions ${u_{k,\varepsilon_{n}} \in H^{1}_{0}(\Omega)}$ . We obtain the existence of infinitely many solutions for (*) by showing that as n → ∞, ${u_{k,\varepsilon_{n}}}$ converges strongly in ${H^{1}_{0}(\Omega)}$ to u _k , which must be a solution of (*). Such a convergence is obtained by applying a local Pohozaev identity to exclude the possibility of the concentration of ${\{u_{k,\varepsilon_n}\}}$ .     

Stability estimates for nonlinear hyperbolic problems with nonlinear Wentzell boundary conditions

Of concern is the nonlinear hyperbolic problem with nonlinear dynamic boundary conditions $$\left\{ \begin{array}{lll} u_{tt} ={\rm div} (\mathcal{A} \nabla u)-\gamma (x,u_t), && \quad {\rm in} \; (0, \infty) \times \Omega,\\ u(0, \cdot)=f, \, u_t(0,\cdot)=g, && \quad {\rm in}\; \Omega, \\ u_{tt} + \beta \partial^ \mathcal{A}_\nu u+c(x)u+ \delta (x,u_t)-q \beta \Lambda_{\rm LB} u=0,&& \quad {\rm on} \;(0, \infty ) \times \partial \Omega . \end{array}\right. $$ for t ≥  0 and ${x \in \Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^N}$ ; the last equation holds on the boundary ?Ω. Here ${\mathcal{A}= \{a_{ij}(x)\}_{ij}}$ is a real, hermitian, uniformly positive definite N × N matrix; ${\beta \in C(\partial \Omega)}$ , with β > 0; ${\gamma:\Omega \times \mathbb{R} \to \mathbb{R}; \delta:\partial \Omega \times \mathbb{R} \to \mathbb{R}; \,c:\partial \Omega \to \mathbb{R}; \, q \ge 0, \Lambda_{\rm LB}}$ is the Laplace–Beltrami operator on ?Ω, and ${\partial^\mathcal{A}_\nu u}$ is the conormal derivative of u with respect to ${\mathcal{A}}$ ; everything is sufficiently regular. We prove explicit stability estimates of the solution u with respect to the coefficients ${\mathcal{A},\,\beta,\,\gamma,\,\delta,\,c,\,q}$ , and the initial conditions f, g. Our arguments cover the singular case of a problem with q = 0 which is approximated by problems with positive q.     

Positive solutions of Schrödinger equations and fine regularity of boundary points

Given a Lipschitz domain Ω in ${{\mathbb R}^N}$ and a nonnegative potential V in Ω such that V(x) d(x, ?Ω)² is bounded we study the fine regularity of boundary points with respect to the Schrödinger operator L _V := Δ ? V in Ω. Using potential theoretic methods, several conditions are shown to be equivalent to the fine regularity of ${z \in \partial \Omega}$ . The main result is a simple (explicit if Ω is smooth) necessary and sufficient condition involving the size of V for ${z \in \partial \Omega}$ to be finely regular. An intermediate result consists in a majorization of ${\int_A \vert{\frac{ u} {d(.,\partial \Omega)}}\vert^2\, dx}$ for u positive harmonic in Ω and ${A \subset \Omega}$ . Conditions for almost everywhere regularity in a subset A of ?Ω are also given as well as an extension of the main results to a notion of fine ${\mathcal{ L}_1 \vert \mathcal{L}_0}$ -regularity, if ${\mathcal{L}_j = \mathcal{L} - V_j, V_0,\, V_1}$ being two potentials, with V ₀ ≤ V ₁ and ${\mathcal{L}}$ a second order elliptic operator.     

Saddle solutions for bistable symmetric semilinear elliptic equations

This paper concerns the existence and asymptotic characterization of saddle solutions in ${\mathbb {R}^{3}}$ for semilinear elliptic equations of the form $$-\Delta u + W'(u) = 0,\quad (x, y, z) \in {\mathbb {R}^{3}} \qquad\qquad\qquad (0.1)$$ where ${W \in \mathcal{C}^{3}(\mathbb {R})}$ is a double well symmetric potential, i.e. it satisfies W(?s) =  W(s) for ${s \in \mathbb {R},W(s) > 0}$ for ${s \in (-1,1)}$ , ${W(\pm 1) = 0}$ and ${W''(\pm 1) > 0}$ . Denoted with ${\theta_{2}}$ the saddle planar solution of (0.1), we show the existence of a unique solution ${\theta_{3} \in {\mathcal{C}^{2}}(\mathbb {R}^{3})}$ which is odd with respect to each variable, symmetric with respect to the diagonal planes, verifies ${0 < \theta_{3}(x,y,z) < 1}$ for x, y, z >  0 and ${\theta_{3}(x, y, z) \to_{z \to + \infty} \theta_{2}(x, y)}$ uniformly with respect to ${(x, y) \in \mathbb {R}^{2}}$ .     

Boundary partial regularity for a class of biharmonic maps

We consider the Dirichlet problem for biharmonic maps u from a bounded, smooth domain ${\Omega\subset\mathbb R^n (n\ge 5)}$ to a compact, smooth Riemannian manifold ${N\subset{\mathbb {R}}^l}$ without boundary. For any smooth boundary data, we show that if u is a stationary biharmonic map that satisfies a certain boundary monotonicity inequality, then there exists a closed subset ${\Sigma\subset\overline{\Omega}}$ , with ${H^{n-4}(\Sigma)=0}$ , such that ${\displaystyle u\in C^\infty(\overline\Omega\setminus\Sigma, N)}$ .     

On the singular set of minimizers of p(x)-energies

We treat the partial regularity of locally bounded local minimizers $u$ for the $p(x)$ -energy functional $$\begin{aligned} \mathcal{E }(v;\Omega ) = \int \left( g^{\alpha \beta }(x)h_{ij}(v) D_\alpha v^i (x) D_\beta v^j (x) \right) ^{p(x)/2} dx, \end{aligned}$$ defined for maps $v : \Omega (\subset \mathbb R ^m) \rightarrow \mathbb R ^n$ . Assuming the Lipschitz continuity of the exponent $p(x) \ge 2$ , we prove that $u \in C^{1,\alpha }(\Omega _0)$ for some $\alpha \in (0,1)$ and an open set $\Omega _0 \subset \Omega $ with $\dim _\mathcal{H }(\Omega \setminus \Omega _0) \le m-[\gamma _1]-1$ , where $\dim _\mathcal{H }$ stands for the Hausdorff dimension, $[\gamma _1]$ the integral part of $\gamma _1$ , and $\gamma _1 = \inf p(x)$ .     

A residual existence theorem for linear equations

A residual existence theorem for linear equations is proved: if ${A \in \mathbb{R}^{m\times n}}$ , ${b \in \mathbb{R}^{m}}$ and if X is a finite subset of ${\mathbb{R}^{n}}$ satisfying ${{\rm max}_{x \in X}p^T(Ax-b) \geq 0}$ for each ${p \in \mathbb{R}^{m}}$ , then the system of linear equations Ax = b has a solution in the convex hull of X. An application of this result to unique solvability of the absolute value equation Ax + B|x| = b is given.