Elliptic Theory for Sets with Higher Co-dimensional Boundaries

Many geometric and analytic properties of sets hinge on the properties of elliptic measure, notoriously missing for sets of higher co-dimension. The aim of this manuscript is to develop a version of elliptic theory, associated to a linear PDE, which ultimately yields a notion analogous to that of the harmonic measure, for sets of codimension higher than 1. To this end, we turn to degenerate elliptic equations. Let Γ ⊂ R n \Gamma \subset \mathbb {R}^n be an Ahlfors regular set of dimension d > n − 1 d>n-1 (not necessarily integer) and Ω = R n ∖ Γ \Omega = \mathbb {R}^n \setminus \Gamma . Let L = − div ⁡ A ∇ L = - \operatorname {div} A\nabla be a degenerate elliptic operator with measurable coefficients such that the ellipticity constants of the matrix A A are bounded from above and below by a multiple of dist ⁡ ( ⋅ , Γ ) d + 1 − n \operatorname {dist}(\cdot , \Gamma )^{d+1-n} . We define weak solutions; prove trace and extension theorems in suitable weighted Sobolev spaces; establish the maximum principle, De Giorgi-Nash-Moser estimates, the Harnack inequality, the Hölder continuity of solutions (inside and at the boundary). We define the Green function and provide the basic set of pointwise and/or L p L^p estimates for the Green function and for its gradient. With this at hand, we define harmonic measure associated to L L , establish its doubling property, non-degeneracy, change-of-the-pole formulas, and, finally, the comparison principle for local solutions. In another article to appear, we will prove that when Γ \Gamma is the graph of a Lipschitz function with small Lipschitz constant, we can find an elliptic operator L L for which the harmonic measure given here is absolutely continuous with respect to the d d -Hausdorff measure on Γ \Gamma and vice versa. It thus extends Dahlberg’s theorem to some sets of codimension higher than 1.

Weighted W 1, p (·)-Regularity for Degenerate Elliptic Equations in Reifenberg Domains

Let w be a Muckenhoupt A 2(ℝ n ) weight and Ω a bounded Reifenberg flat domain in ℝ n . Assume that p (·):Ω → (1, ∞) is a variable exponent satisfying the log-Hölder continuous condition. In this article, the authors investigate the weighted W 1, p (·)(Ω, w)-regularity of the weak solutions of second order degenerate elliptic equations in divergence form with Dirichlet boundary condition, under the assumption that the degenerate coefficients belong to weighted BMO spaces with small norms.

Lipschitz regularity for degenerate elliptic integrals with 𝑝, 𝑞-growth

We establish the local Lipschitz continuity and the higher differentiability of vector-valued local minimizers of a class of energy integrals of the Calculus of Variations. The main novelty is that we deal with possibly degenerate energy densities with respect to the 𝑥-variable.