We prove a Carleman estimate for elliptic second order partial differential operators with Lipschitz continuous coefficients. The Carleman estimate is valid for any complex-valued function $u\in W^{2,2}$ with support in a punctured ball of arbitrary radius. The novelty of this Carleman estimate is that we establish an explicit dependence on the Lipschitz and ellipticity constants, the dimension of the space and the radius of the ball. In particular we provide a uniform and quantitative bound on the weight function for a class of elliptic operators given explicitly in terms of ellipticity and Lipschitz constant.
In this paper we provide a simple proof of a Carleman estimate for a second order elliptic operator $P$ with Lipschitz leading coefficients. We apply such a Carleman estimate to derive a three sphere inequality for solutions to equation $Pu=0$
In this paper, we derive a local Carleman estimate for the complex second order elliptic operator with Lipschitz coefficients having jump discontinuities. Combing the result in [BL] and the arguments in [DcFLVW], we present an elementary method to derive the Carleman estimate under the optimal regularity assumption on the coefficients.
We consider a second-order selfadjoint elliptic operator with an anisotropic diffusion matrix having a jump across a smooth hypersurface. We prove the existence of a weight-function such that a Carleman estimate holds true. We moreover prove that the conditions imposed on the weight function are necessary.
In this paper we prove a local Carleman estimate for second order elliptic equations with a general anisotropic Lipschitz coefficients having a jump at an interface. Our approach does not rely on the techniques of microlocal analysis. We make use of the elementary method so that we are able to impose almost optimal assumptions on the coefficients and, consequently, the interface.
In this paper, for a family of second-order elliptic equations with rapidly oscillating periodic coefficients, we are interested in a Carleman-type inequality for these solutions satisfying an additional growth condition in elliptic periodic homogenization, which implies a three-ball inequality without an error term at a macroscopic scale. Moreover, if we replace the additional growth condition by the doubling condition at a macroscopic scale, then the three-ball inequality without an error term holds at any scale. The proof relies on the convergence of $H^1$-norm for the solution and the comp…
In this article we deal with different forms of the unique continuation property for second order elliptic equations with nonlinear potentials of sublinear growth. Under suitable regularity assumptions, we prove the weak and the strong unique continuation property. Moreover, we also discuss the unique continuation property from measurable sets, which shows that nodal domains to these equations must have vanishing Lebesgue measure. Our methods rely on suitable Carleman estimates, for which we include the sublinear potential into the main part of the operator.
In this paper, we consider Carleman estimates and inverse problems for the coupled quantitative thermoacoustic equations. In Part I, we establish Carleman estimates for the coupled quantitative thermoacoustic equations by assuming that the coefficients satisfy suitable conditions and taking the usual weight function $φ(x,t)={\rm e}^{λψ(x,t)}$, $ψ(x,t)=\left|x-x_{0}\right|^{2}-β\left(t-t_0\right)^{2}+βt_0^{2}$ for $x$ in a bounded domain in $\mathbb{R}^{n}$ with $C^{3}$-boundary and $t\in(0, T)$, where $t_0=T/2$. We will discuss applications of the Carleman estimates to some inverse problems fo…
We consider elliptic transmission problems with complex coefficients across an interface. Under proper transmission conditions, that extend known conditions for well-posedness, and sub-ellipticity we derive microlocal and local Carleman estimates near the interface. Carleman estimates are weighted a priori estimates of the solutions of the elliptic transmission problem. The weight is of exponential form, exp($tau$ ϕ) where $tau$ can be taken as large as desired. Such estimates have numerous applications in unique continuation, inverse problems, and control theory. The proof relies on microloca…
In this paper, we obtain new Carleman estimates for a class of variable coefficient degenerate elliptic operators whose constant coefficient model at one point is the so called Baouendi-Grushin operator. This generalizes the results obtained by the two of us with Garofalo in [9] where similar estimates were established for the "constant coefficient" Baouendi-Grushin operator. Consequently, we obtain: (i) a Bourgain-Kenig type quantitative uniqueness result in the variable coefficient setting; (ii) and a strong unique continuation property for a class of degenerate sublinear equations. We also …
In this paper we establish some new $L^{2}-L^{2}$ Carleman estimates for the Baouendi-Grushin operators $\mathscr{B}_γ$, in (1.1) below. We apply such estimates to obtain: (i) an extension of the Bourgain-Kenig quantitative unique continuation; (ii) the strong unique continuation property for some degenerate sublinear equations.
Using the three balls inequality, we adapt the elegant ideas of Carleman and Domar from complex analysis to linear elliptic PDE and generalize the classical Levinson's loglog theorem.
In this article, we consider a linearized magnetohydrodynamics system for incompressible flow in a three-dimensional bounded domain. We first prove two kinds of Carleman estimates. This is done by combining the Carleman estimates for the parabolic and the elliptic equations. Then we apply the Carleman estimates to prove Holder type stability results for some inverse source problems.
This paper concerns about the weak unique continuation property of solutions of a general system of differential equation/inequality with a second order strongly elliptic system as its leading part. We put not only some natural assumption which called {\sl basic assumptions}, but also some technical assumptions which we called {\sl further assumptions}. It is shown as usual by first applying the Holmgren transform to this inequality and then establishing a Carleman estimate for the leading part of the transformed inequality. The Carleman estimate given via a partition of unity and Carleman est…
We study via Carleman estimates the sharpest possible exponential decay for {\it waveguide} solutions to the Laplace equation $$(\partial^2_t+\triangle)u=Vu+W\cdot(\partial_t,\nabla)u,$$ and find a necessary quantitative condition on the exponential decay in the spatial-variable of nonzero waveguides solutions which depends on the size of $V$ and $W$ at infinity.
We prove logarithmic convexity estimates and three balls inequalities for discrete magnetic Schrödinger operators. These quantitatively connect the discrete setting in which the unique continuation property fails and the continuum setting in which the unique continuation property is known to hold under suitable regularity assumptions. As a key auxiliary result which might be of independent interest we present a Carleman estimate for these discrete operators.
We investigate the quantitative unique continuation properties of solutions to second order elliptic equations with singular lower order terms. The main theorem presents a quantification of the strong unique continuation property for $Δ+ V$. That is, for any non-trivial $u$ that solves $Δu + V u = 0$ in some open, connected subset of $\mathbb{R}^n$, we estimate the vanishing order of solutions in terms of the $L^t$-norm of $V$. Our results apply to all $t > \frac n 2$ and $n \ge 3$. With these maximal order of vanishing estimates, we employ a scaling argument to produce quantitative unique con…
Quantitative unique continuation principles for multiscale structures are an important ingredient in a number applications, e.g. random Schrödinger operators and control theory. We review recent results and announce new ones regarding quantitative unique continuation principles for partial differential equations with an underlying multiscale structure. They concern Schrödinger and second order elliptic operators. An important feature is that the estimates are scale free and with quantitative dependence on parameters. These unique continuation principles apply to functions satisfying certain `r…
We investigate the quantitative unique continuation of solutions to higher order elliptic equations with singular coefficients. Quantitative unique continuation described by the vanishing order is a quantitative form of strong unique continuation property. We characterize the vanishing order of solutions for higher order elliptic equations in terms of the norms of coefficient functions in their respective Lebesgue spaces. New versions of quantitative Carleman estimates are established.
In this paper we study quantitative uniqueness estimates of solutions to general second order elliptic equations with magnetic and electric potentials. We derive lower bounds of decay rate at infinity for any nontrivial solution under some general assumptions. The lower bounds depend on asymptotic behaviors of magnetic and electric potentials. The proof is carried out by the Carleman method and the bootstrapping arguments.
We use a Carleman type inequality of Koch and Tataru to obtain quantitative estimates of unique continuation for solutions of second order elliptic equations with singular lower order terms. First we prove a three sphere inequality and then describe two methods of propagation of smallness from sets of positive measure.
In this paper, we would like to derive a quantitative uniqueness estimate, the three-region inequality, for the second order elliptic equation with jump discontinuous coefficients. The derivation of the inequality relies on the Carleman estimate proved in our previous work. We then apply the three-region inequality to study the size estimate problem with one boundary measurement.
In this paper, we would like to derive three-ball inequalities and propagation of smallness for the complex second order elliptic equation with discontinuous Lipschitz coefficients. As an application of such estimates, we study the size estimate problem by one pair of Cauchy data on the boundary. The main ingredient in the derivation of three-ball inequalities and propagation of smallness is a local Carleman proved in our recent paper [FVW].
In this paper we study the local behavior of a solution to second order elliptic operators with sharp singular coefficients in lower order terms. One of the main results is the bound on the vanishing order of the solution, which is a quantitative estimate of the strong unique continuation property. Our proof relies on Carleman estimates with carefully chosen phases. A key strategy in the proof is to derive doubling inequalities via three-sphere inequalities. Our method can also be applied to certain elliptic systems with similar singular coefficients.
Carleman Estimates for Wave Equations on the Half-Line: AI-Assisted Weights and Applications
University of California, San Diego（加州大学圣地亚哥分校）；Southwest Jiaotong University（西南交通大学）；Worcester Polytechnic Institute（伍斯特理工学院）；University of Missouri-Kansas City（密苏里大学堪萨斯城分校）
We give a sharp upper bound on the vanishing order of solutions to Schrodinger equation with C^1 electric and magnetic potentials on a compact smooth manifold. Our method is based on quantitative Carleman type inequalities developed by Donnelly and Fefferman. It also extends the first author's previous work to the magnetic potential case.
We investigate the quantitative uniqueness of solutions to parabolic equations with lower order terms on compact smooth manifolds. Quantitative uniqueness is a quantitative form of strong unique continuation property. We characterize quantitative uniqueness by the rate of vanishing. We can obtain the vanishing order of solutions by $C^{1, 1}$ norm of the potential functions, as well as the $L^\infty$ norm of the coefficient functions. Some quantitative Carleman estimates and three cylinder inequalities are established.
Carleman estimates for backward Cahn-Hilliard-reaction-diffusion problems
University of Pavia（帕维亚大学）；New York University Abu Dhabi（纽约大学阿布扎比分校）；University of Milan（米兰大学）；Istituto di Matematica Applicata e Tecnologie Informatiche “Enrico Magenes”, CNR（恩里科·马格内斯应用数学与信息技术研究所，意大利国家研究委员会）；The University of Tokyo（东京大学）
In this article, we study the vanishing order of solutions to second order elliptic equations with singular lower order terms in the plane. In particular, we derive lower bounds for solutions on arbitrarily small balls in terms of the Lebesgue norms of the lower order terms for all admissible exponents. Then we show that a scaling argument allows us to pass from these vanishing order estimates to estimates for the rate of decay of solutions at infinity. Our proofs rely on a new $L^p - L^q$ Carleman estimate for the Laplacian in $\mathbb{R}^2$.
In this paper we study the local behavior of a solution to the $l$th power of Laplacian with singular coefficients in lower order terms. We obtain a bound on the vanishing order of the nontrivial solution. Our proofs use Carleman estimates with carefully chosen weights. We will derive appropriate three-sphere inequalities and apply them to obtain doubling inequalities and the maximal vanishing order.
The aim of this article is to show how certain parabolic theorems follow from their elliptic counterparts. This technique is demonstrated through new proofs of five important theorems in parabolic unique continuation and the regularity theory of parabolic equations and geometric flows. Specifically, we give new proofs of an $L^2$ Carleman estimate for the heat operator, and the monotonicity formulas for the frequency function associated to the heat operator, the two-phase free boundary problem, the flow of harmonic maps, and the mean curvature flow. The proofs rely only on the underlying ellip…
This paper discusses the unique continuation principal of the solutions of the following perturbed fourth order elliptic differential operator $\mathcal{L}_{A,q}u=0$, where \[ \mathcal{L}_{A,q}(x,D)\ =\ \sum_{j=1}^nD^4_{x_j} + \sum_{j=1}^n A_jD_{x_j} + q, \qquad (A, q) \in W^{1,\infty}(Ω,\mathbb{C}^n) \times L^{\infty}(Ω,\mathbb{C}) \] whose principal term is not given by some integer power of the Laplacian operator. We derive some suitable Carleman estimates which is the main tool to prove the unique continuation principle. As a by-product, we also deduce some stability estimate and prove the…
In this paper we obtain quantitative bounds on the maximal order of vanishing for solutions to $(\partial_t - Δ)^s u =Vu$ for $s\in [1/2, 1)$ via new Carleman estimates. Our main result Theorem 1.1 and Theorem 1.3 can be thought of as a parabolic generalization of the corresponding quantitative uniqueness result in the time independent case due to Rüland and it can also be regarded as a nonlocal generalization of a similar result due to Zhu for solutions to local parabolic equations.
A systematic geometric theory for the ultradifferentiable (non-quasianalytic and quasianalytic) wavefront set similar to the well-known theory in the classic smooth and analytic setting is developed. In particular an analogue of Bony's Theorem and the invariance of the ultradifferentiable wavefront set under diffeomorphisms of the same regularity is proven using a Theorem of Dyn'kin about the almost-analytic extension of ultradifferentiable functions. Furthermore we prove a microlocal elliptic regularity theorem for operators defined on ultradifferentiable vector bundles. As an application we …
We obtain sharp maximal vanishing order at a given time level for solutions to parabolic equations with a $C{^1}$ potential $V$. Our main result Theorem 1.1 is a parabolic generalization of a well known result of Donnelly-Fefferman and Bakri. It also sharpens a previous result of Zhu that establishes similar vanishing order estimates which are instead averaged over time. The principal tool in our analysis is a new quantitative version of the well-known Escauriaza-Fernandez-Vessella type Carleman estimate that we establish in our setting.
We prove a sharp three sphere inequality for solutions to third order perturbations of a product of two second order elliptic operators with real coefficients. Then we derive various kinds of quantitative estimates of unique continuation for the anisotropic plate equation. Among these, we prove a stability estimate for the Cauchy problem for such an equation and we illustrate some applications to the size estimates of an unknown inclusion made of different material that might be present in the plate. The paper is self-contained and the Carleman estimate, from which the sharp three sphere inequ…
In this paper we study the local behavior of a solution to the Stokes system with singular coefficients. One of the main results is the bound on the vanishing order of a nontrivial solution to the Stokes system, which is a quantitative version of the strong unique continuation property. Our proof relies on some delicate Carleman-type estimates. We first use these estimates to derive crucial \emph{optimal} three-ball inequalities. Taking advantage of the optimality, we then derive an upper bound on the vanishing order of any nontrivial solution to the Stokes system from those three-ball inequal…
In this article, we study the quantitative uniqueness of solutions to second order elliptic equations with singular lower order terms. We quantify the strong unique continuation property by estimating the maximal vanishing order of solutions. That is, when $u$ is a non-trivial solution to $\triangle u + W \cdot \nabla u + V u = 0$ in some open, connected subset of $\mathbb R^n$, where $n \geq 3$, we characterize the vanishing order of solutions in terms of the norms of $V$ and $W$ in their respective Lebesgue spaces. Using these maximal order of vanishing estimates, we also establish quantitat…
In this article we determine bounds on the maximal order of vanishing for eigenfunctions of a generalized Dirichlet-to-Neumann map (which is associated with fractional Schrödinger equations) on a compact, smooth Riemannian manifold, $(M,g)$, without boundary. Moreover, with only slight modifications these results generalize to equations with $C^1$ potentials. Here Carleman estimates are a key tool. These yield a quantitative three balls inequality which implies quantitative bulk and boundary doubling estimates and hence leads to the control of the maximal order of vanishing. Using the boundary…
We give a new stability estimate for the problem of determining the time-dependent zero order coefficient in a parabolic equation from a partial parabolic Dirichlet-to-Neumann map. The novelty of our result is that, contrary to the previous works, we do not need any measurement on the final time. We also show how this result can be used to establish a stability estimate for the problem of determining the nonlinear term in a semilinear parabolic equation from the corresponding "linearized" Dirichlet-to-Neumann map. The key ingredient in our analysis is a parabolic version of an elliptic Carlema…
We give full boundary extensions to two fundamental estimates in the theory of elliptic PDE, the weak Harnack inequality and the quantitative strong maximum principle, for uniformly elliptic equations in non-divergence form.
Based on a variant of frequency function, we improve the vanishing order of solutions for Schrödinger equations which describes quantitative behavior of strong uniqueness continuation property. For the first time, we investigate the quantitative uniqueness of higher order elliptic equations and show the vanishing order of solutions. Furthermore, strong unique continuation is established for higher order elliptic equations using this variant of frequency function.
In this paper, we establish a globally quantitative estimate of unique continuation at one time point for solutions of parabolic equations with Neumann boundary conditions in bounded domains. Our proof is mainly based on Carleman commutator estimates and a global frequency function argument, which is motivated from a recent work [5]. As an application, we obtain an observability inequality from measurable sets in time for all solutions of the above equations.
In this article we prove quantitative unique continuation results for wave operators of the form $\partial$ 2 t -- div(c(x)$\nabla$$\bullet$) where the scalar coefficient c is discontinuous across an interface of codimension one in a bounded domain or on a compact Riemannian manifold. We do not make any assumptions on the geometry of the interface or on the sign of the jumps of the coefficient c. The key ingredient is a local Carleman estimate for a wave operator with discontinuous coefficients. We then combine this estimate with the recent techniques of Laurent-L{é}autaud [LL19] to propagate …
We study the quantitative unique continuation property of some higher order elliptic operators. In the case of $P=(-Δ)^m$, where $m$ is a positive integer, we derive lower bounds of decay at infinity for any nontrivial solutions under some general assumptions. Furthermore, in dimension 2, we can obtain essentially sharp lower bounds for some forth order elliptic operators, the sharpness is shown by constructing a Meshkov type example.
In these lectures we present some useful techniques to study quantitative properties of solutions of elliptic PDEs. Our aim is to outline a proof of a recent result on propagation of smallness. The ideas are also useful in the study of the zero sets of eigenfunctions of Laplace-Beltrami operator and we discuss the connection. Some basic facts about second order elliptic PDEs in divergent form are collected in the Appendix at the end of the notes.
We study the averaging behavior of nonlinear uniformly elliptic partial differential equations with random Dirichlet or Neumann boundary data oscillating on a small scale. Under conditions on the operator, the data and the random media leading to concentration of measure, we prove an almost sure and local uniform homogenization result with a rate of convergence in probability.
In this paper, we derive new asymptotic expansions for the solutions of higher order elliptic equations in the presence of small inclusions. As a byproduct, we derive a topological derivative based algorithm for the reconstruction of piecewise smooth functions. This algorithm can be used for edge detection in imaging, topological optimization, and for inverse problems, such as Quantitative Photoacoustic Tomography, for which we demonstrate the effectiveness of our asymptotic expansion method numerically.
This work is devoted to prove the exponential decay for the energy of solutions of a higher order Korteweg -de Vries (KdV)--Benjamin-Bona-Mahony (BBM) equation on a periodic domain with a localized damping mechanism. Following the method in [11], which combines energy estimates, multipliers and compactness arguments, the problem is reduced to prove the Unique Continuation Property (UCP) for weak solutions of the model. Then, this is done by deriving Carleman estimates for a system of coupled elliptic-hyperbolic equations.
