The Liouville theorem and linear operators satisfying the maximum principle
Nathaël Alibaud, Félix del Teso, Jørgen Endal, Espen R. Jakobsen
备注：
This is an independent and substantial update of arXiv:1807.01843. Here we treat general operators which could be both local and nonlocal, symmetric and nonsymmetric. 13 pages. v3: Update according to the suggestions of the referees. To appear in Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées
A result by Courrège says that linear translation invariant operators satisfy the maximum principle if and only if they are of the form $\mathcal{L}=\mathcal{L}^{σ,b}+\mathcal{L}^μ$ where $$ \mathcal{L}^{σ,b}[u](x)=\text{tr}(σσ^{\texttt{T}} D^2u(x))+b\cdot Du(x) $$ and $$ \mathcal{L}^μ[u](x)=\int \big(u(x+z)-u-z\cdot Du(x) \mathbf{1}_{|z| \leq
1}\big) \,\mathrm{d} μ(z). $$ This class of operators coincides with the infinitesimal generators of Lévy processes in probability theory. In this paper we give a complete characterization of the translation invariant operators of this form that satisfy the Liouville theorem: Bounded solutions $u$ of $\mathcal{L}[u]=0$ in $\mathbb{R}^d$ are constant. The Liouville property is obtained as a consequence of a periodicity result that completely characterizes bounded distributional solutions of $\mathcal{L}[u]=0$ in $\mathbb{R}^d$. The proofs combine arguments from PDE and group theories. They are simple and short.
We investigate the characterization of generators $\mathcal{L}$ of Lévy processes satisfying the Liouville theorem: Bounded functions $u$ solving $\mathcal{L}[u]=0$ are constant. These operators are degenerate elliptic of the form $\mathcal{L}=\mathcal{L}^{σ,b}+\mathcal{L}^μ$ for some local part $\mathcal{L}^{σ,b}[u]=\text{tr}(σσ^{\texttt{T}} D^2u)+b \cdot Du$ and nonlocal part $$ \mathcal{L}^μ[u](x)=\int \big(u(x+z)-u(x)-z \cdot Du(x) \mathbf{1}_{|z| \leq 1}\big) \, \text{d} μ(z), $$ where $μ\geq 0$ is a so-called Lévy measure possibly unbounded for small $z$. In this paper, we focus on the p…
In this paper, we establish a local gradient estimate for a $p$-Lpalacian equation with a fast growing gradient nonlinearity. With this estimate, we can prove a parabolic Liouville theorem for ancient solutions satisfying some growth restriction near infinity.
We prove several Liouville type results for the stationary MHD and Hall-MHD equations. In particular, we show that the velocity and magnetic field, belonging to some Lorentz spaces or satisfying a priori decay assumption, must be zero.
In this paper, we establish the following Liouville theorem for fractional \emph{p}-harmonic functions. {\em Assume that $u$ is a bounded solution of $$(-\lap)^s_p u(x) = 0, \;\; x \in \mathbb{R}^n,$$ with $0<s<1$ and $p \geq 2$. Then $u$ must be constant.} A new idea is employed to prove this result, which is completely different from the previous ones in deriving Liouville theorems. For any given hyper-plane in $\mathbb{R}^n$, we show that $u$ is symmetric about the plane. To this end, we established a {\em maximum principle} for anti-symmetric functions on any half space. We believe that th…
We study different maximum principles for non-local non-linear operators with non-standard growth that arise naturally in the context of fractional Orlicz-Sobolev spaces and whose most notable representative is the fractional $g-$Laplacian: \[ (-Δ_g)^su(x):=\textrm{p.v.}\int_{\mathbb{R}^n}g\left(\frac{u(x)-u(y)}{|x-y|^s}\right)\frac{dy}{|x-y|^{n+s}}, \] being $g$ the derivative of a Young function. We further derive qualitative properties of solutions such as a Liouville type theorem and symmetry results and present several possible extensions and some interesting open questions. These are the…
In this note, we study the Liouville equation $Δu = -e^u$ on a graph G satisfying certain isoperimetric inequality. Following the idea of W. Ding, we prove that there exists a uniform lower bound for the energy, $Σ_G e^u$ of any solution $u$, to the equation. In particular, for the 2-dimensional lattice graph $Z^2$; the lower bound is given by 4.
We present a simple, short and elementary proof that if $v$ is a Beltrami flow with a finite energy in $\mathbb R^3$ then $v=0$. In the case of the Beltrami flows satisfying $v\in L^\infty _{loc} (\Bbb R^3) \cap L^q(\Bbb R^3)$ with $q\in [2, 3)$, or $|v(x)|=O(1/|x|^{1+\varepsilon})$ for some $\varepsilon >0$, we provide a different, simple proof that $v=0$.
We consider variational integrals of linear growth satisfying the condition of $μ$-ellipticity for some exponent $μ>1$ and prove that stationary points $u$: $\mathbb{R}^2 \to \mathbb{R}^N$ with the property \[ \limsup_{|x|\to \infty} \frac{|u(x)|}{|x|} < \infty \] must be affine functions. The latter condition can be dropped in the scalar case together with appropriate assumptions on the energy density providing an extension of Bernstein's theorem.
We prove that suitable weak solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations exhibit Type I singularities if and only if there exists a non-trivial mild bounded ancient solution satisfying a Type I decay condition. The main novelty is in the reverse direction, which is based on the idea of zooming out on a regular solution to generate a singularity. By similar methods, we prove a Liouville theorem for ancient solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations bounded in $L^3$ along a backward sequence of times.
In this paper we prove Liouville type theorem for the stationary Navier-Stokes equations in $\Bbb R^3$ under the assumptions on the relative decays of velocity, pressure and the head pressure. More precisely, we show that any smooth solution $(u,p)$ of the stationary Navier-Stokes equations satisfying $u(x) \to 0$ as $|x|\to +\infty$ and the condition of finite Dirichlet integral $\int_{\Bbb R^3} | \nabla u|^2 dx <+\infty $ is trivial, if either $|u|/|Q|=O(1)$ or $|p|/|Q| =O(1) $ as $|x|\to \infty$, where $|Q|=\frac12 |u|^2 +p$ is the head pressure.
We prove Liouville type theorems for $p$-harmonic functions on exterior domains of the $d$-dimensional Euclidean space, where $1<p<\infty$ and $d\geq 2$. We show that every positive $p$-harmonic function satisfying zero Dirichlet, Neumann or Robin boundary conditions and having zero limit as $|x|$ tends to infinity is identically zero. In the case of zero Neumann boundary conditions, we establish that any semi-bounded $p$-harmonic function is constant if $1<p<d$. If $p\ge d$, then it is either constant or it behaves asymptotically like the fundamental solution of the homogeneous $p$-Laplace eq…
We consider a Ginzburg-Landau type equation in $\R^2$ of the form $-Δu = u J'(1-|u|^{2})$ with a potential function $J$ satisfying weak conditions allowing for example a zero of infinite order in the origin. We extend in this context the results concerning quantization of finite potential solutions of H.Brezis, F.Merle, T.Rivière from \cite{BMR} who treat the case when $J$ behaves polinomially near 0, as well as a result of Th. Cazenave, found in the same reference, and concerning the form of finite energy solutions.
In this paper, we prove Liouville type theorems for stable solutions to the weighted fractional Lane-Emden system \begin{align*} (-Δ)^s u = h(x)v^p,\quad (-Δ)^s v= h(x)u^q, \quad u,v>0\quad \mbox{in }\;\mathbb{R}^N, \end{align*} where $1<q\leq p$ and $h$ is a positive continuous function in $\mathbb{R}^N$ satisfying $\displaystyle{\liminf_{|x|\to \infty}}\frac{h(x)}{|x|^\ell} > 0$ with $\ell > 0.$ Our results generalize the results established in \cite{HHM16} for the Laplacian case (correspond to $s=1$) and improve the previous work \cite{TuanHoang21}. As a consequence, we prove classification…
This note is a synthesis of my reflexions on some questions that have emerged during the MATRIX event "Recent Trends on Nonlinear PDEs of Elliptic and Parabolic Type" concerning the qualitative properties of solutions to some non local reaction-diffusion equations of the form L[u](x) + f (u(x)) = 0, for x $\in$ R n \ K, where K $\subset$ R N is a bounded smooth compact "obstacle", L is non local operator and f is a bistable nonlinearity. When K is convex and the nonlocal operator L is a continuous operator of convolution type then some Liouville-type results for solutions satisfying some asymp…
We examine the general weighted Lane-Emden system \begin{align*} -Δu = ρ(x)v^p,\quad -Δv= ρ(x)u^θ, \quad u,v>0\quad \mbox{in }\;\mathbb{R}^N \end{align*} where $1<p\leqθ$ and $ρ: \mathbb{R}^N\rightarrow \mathbb{R}$ is a radial continuous function satisfying $ρ(x)\geq A(1+|x|^2)^{\fracα{2}}$ in $\mathbb{R}^N$ for some $α\geq 0$ and $A>0$. We prove some Liouville type results for stable solution and improve the previous works \cite{co, Fa, HU}. In particular, we establish a new comparison property (see Proposition 1.1 below) which is crucial to handle the case $1 < p \leq \frac{4}{3}$. Our resul…
In this paper, we generalize Liouville type theorems for some semilinear partial differential inequalities to sub-Riemannian manifolds satisfying a nonnegative generalized curvature-dimension inequality introduced by Baudoin and Garofalo in [5]. In particular, our results apply to all Sasakian manifolds with nonnegative horizontal Webster-Tanaka-Ricci curvature. The key ingredient is to construct a class of "good" cut-off functions. We also provide some upper bounds for lifespan to parabolic and hyperbolic inequalities.
For the two dimensional stationary MHD equations, we proved that Liouville type theorems hold if the velocity is growing at infinity, where the magnetic field is assumed to be bounded under a smallness condition. The key point is to overcome the nonlinear terms, since no maximum principle holds for the MHD case with respect to the Navier-Stokes equations.
In this paper, we establish Liouville type results for semilinear subelliptic systems associated with the sub-Laplacian on the Heisenberg group $\mathbb{H}^{n}$ involving two different kinds of general nonlinearities. The main technique of the proof is the method of moving planes combined with some integral inequalities replacing the role of maximum principles. As a special case, we obtain the Liouville theorem for the Lane-Emden system on the Heisenberg group $\mathbb{H}^{n}$, which also appears to be a new result in the literature.
This paper is concerned with two properties of positive weak solutions of quasilinear elliptic equations with nonlinear gradient terms. First, we show a Liouville-type theorem for positive weak solutions of the equation involving the $m$-Laplacian operator \begin{equation*} -Δ_{m}u=u^q|\nabla u|^p\ \ \ \mathrm{in}\ \mathbb{R}^N, \end{equation*} where $N\geq1$, $m>1$ and $p,q\geq0$. The technique of Bernstein gradient estimates is ultilized to study the case $p<m$. Moreover, a Liouville-type theorem for supersolutions under subcritial range of exponents \begin{equation*} q(N-m)+p(N-1)<N(m-1) \e…
Liouville theorems for scaling invariant nonlinear parabolic equations and systems (saying that the equation or system does not possess positive entire solutions) guarantee optimal universal estimates of solutions of related initial and initial-boundary value problems. In the case of the nonlinear heat equation $$u_t-Δu=u^p\quad\hbox{in}\quad {R}^n\times{R}, \qquad p>1, $$ the nonexistence of positive classical solutions in the subcritical range $p(n-2)<n+2$ has been conjectured for a long time, but all known results require either a more restrictive assumption on $p$ or deal with a special cl…
Liouville type of theorems play a key role in the blow-up approach to study the global regularity of the three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations. In this paper, we will prove Liouville type of theorems to the 3-D axisymmetric Navier-Stokes equations with swirls under some suitable assumptions on swirl component velocity $u_θ$ which are scaling invariant. It is known that $ru_θ$ satisfies the maximum principle. The assumptions on $u_θ$ will be natural and useful to make further studies on the global regularity to the three-dimensional incompressible axisymmetric Navier-Stokes equations.
In this paper we study the Liouville-type properties for solutions to the steady incompressible Euler equations with forces in $\Bbb R^N$. If we assume "single signedness condition" on the force, then we can show that a $C^1 (\Bbb R^N)$ solution $(v,p)$ with $|v|^2+ |p|\in L^{\frac{q}{2}}(\Bbb R^N)$, $q\in (\frac{3N}{N-1}, \infty)$ is trivial, $v=0$. For the solution of of the steady Navier-Stokes equations, satisfying $v(x)\to 0$ as $|x|\to \infty$, the condition $\int_{\Bbb R^3} |Δv|^{\frac65} dx<\infty$, which is stronger than the important D-condition, $\int_{\Bbb R^3} |\nabla v|^2 dx <\in…
We study a class of second-order boundary-degenerate elliptic equations in two dimensions with minimal regularity assumptions. We prove a maximum principle and a Harnack inequality at the degenerate boundary, and assuming local boundedness, we prove continuity. On globally defined non-negative solutions we provide strong constraints on behavior at infinity, and prove a Liouville-type theorem for entire solutions on the closed half-plane. The class of PDE in question includes many from mathematical finance, Keldysh- and Tricomi-type PDE, and the 2nd order reduction of the fully non-linear 4th o…
In this paper we prove a Liouville type theorem for generalized stationary Navier-Stokes systems in $\Bbb R^3$, which model non-Newtonian fluids, where the Laplacian term $Δu$ is replaced by the corresponding non linear operator $\bA_p( u)=\nabla \cdot ( |\bD(u)|^{p-2} \bD(u))$ with $ \bD(u) = \frac{1}{2} (\nabla u + (\nabla u)^{ \top})$, $3/2<p< 3$. In the case $3/2< p\le 9/5$ we show that a suitable weak solution $u\in W^{1, p}(\Bbb R^3)$ satisfying $ \liminf_{R \rightarrow \infty} |u_{ B(R)}| =0$ is trivial, i.e. $u\equiv 0$. On the other hand, for $9/5<p<3$ we impose the condition for the …
In this paper, we establish several Liouville type theorems for entire solutions to fractional parabolic equations. We first obtain the key ingredients needed in the proof of Liouville theorems, such as narrow region principles and maximum principles for antisymmetric functions in unbounded domains, in which we remarkably weaken the usual decay condition $u \to 0$ at infinity with respect to the spacial variables to a polynomial growth on $u$ by constructing auxiliary functions.Then we derive monotonicity for the solutions in a half space $\mathbb{R}_+^n \times \mathbb{R}$ and obtain some new …
We establish a Liouville type theorem for the fractional Lane-Emden system: \begin{eqnarray*} \left\{\begin{array}{l@{\quad }l} (-Δ)^αu=v^q&{\rm in}\,\,\R^N,\\ (-Δ)^αv=u^p&{\rm in}\,\,\R^N, \end{array} \right. \end{eqnarray*} where $ α\in(0,1) $, $ N>2α$ and $ p,q $ are positive real numbers and in an appropriate new range. To prove our result we will use the local realization of fractional Laplacian, which can be constructed as Dirichlet-to-Neumann operator of a degenerate elliptic equation in the spirit of Caffarelli and Silvestre \cite{CS}. Our proof is based on a monotonicity argument for …
We establish new Liouville-type theorems for the two-dimensional stationary magneto-hydrodynamic incompressible system assuming that the velocity and magnetic field have bounded Dirichlet integral. The key tool in our proof is observing that the stream function associated to the magnetic field satisfies a simple drift-diffusion equation for which a maximum principle is available.
We study fully nonlinear elliptic equations such as \[ F(D^2u) = u^p, \quad p>1, \] in $\R^n$ or in exterior domains, where $F$ is any uniformly elliptic, positively homogeneous operator. We show that there exists a critical exponent, depending on the homogeneity of the fundamental solution of $F$, that sharply characterizes the range of $p>1$ for which there exist positive supersolutions or solutions in any exterior domain. Our result generalizes theorems of Bidaut-Véron \cite{B} as well as Cutri and Leoni \cite{CL}, who found critical exponents for supersolutions in the whole space $\R^n$, i…
We introduce a unified framework for the construction of convolutions and product formulas associated with a general class of regular and singular Sturm-Liouville boundary value problems. Our approach is based on the application of the Sturm-Liouville spectral theory to the study of the associated hyperbolic equation. As a by-product, an existence and uniqueness theorem for degenerate hyperbolic Cauchy problems with initial data at a parabolic line is established. The mapping properties of convolution operators generated by Sturm-Liouville operators are studied. Analogues of various notions an…
We consider solutions of the competitive elliptic system \[ \left\{ \begin{array}{ll} -Δu_i = - \sum_{j \neq i} u_i u_j^2 & \text{in $\mathbb{R}^N$} \\ u_i >0 & \text{in $\mathbb{R}^N$} \end{array}\right. \qquad i=1,\dots,k. \] We are concerned with the classification of entire solutions, according with their growth rate. The prototype of our main results is the following: there exists a function $δ=δ(k,N) \in \mathbb{N}$, increasing in $k$, such that if $(u_1,\dots,u_k)$ is a solution and \[ u_1(x)+\cdots+u_k(x) \le C(1+|x|^d) \qquad \text{for every $x \in \mathbb{R}^N$}, \] then $d \ge δ$. T…
In this paper we study Liouville properties of smooth steady axially symmetric solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations. First, we provide another version of the Liouville theorem of \cite{kpr15} in the case of zero swirl, where we replaced the Dirichlet integrability condition by mild decay conditions. Then we prove some Liouville theorems under the assumption $\|\f{u_r}{r}{\bf 1}_{\{u_r< -\f 1r\}}\|_{L^{3/2}(\mbR^3)}< C_{\sharp}$ where $C_{\sharp}$ is a universal constant to be specified. In particular, if $u_r(r,z)\geq -\f1r$ for $\forall (r,z)\in[0,\oo)\times\mbR$, then ${\bf u}\equiv 0$. …
In recent years, the study of the interplay between (fully) non-linear potential theory and geometry received important new impulse. The purpose of this work is to move a step further in this direction by investigating appropriate versions of parabolicity and maximum principles at infinity for large classes of non-linear (sub)equations $F$ on manifolds. The main goal is to show a unifying duality between such properties and the existence of suitable $F$-subharmonic exhaustions, called Khas'minskii potentials, which is new even for most of the "standard" operators arising from geometry, and imp…
Liouville-type theorems, radial symmetry and integral representation of solutions to Hardy-Hénon equations involving higher order fractional Laplacians
In this paper, we prove new Liouville type results for a nonlinear equation involving infinity Laplacian with gradient of the form $$Δ^γ_\infty u + q(x)\cdot \nabla{u} |\nabla{u}|^{2-γ} + f(x, u)\,=\,0\quad \text{in}\; \mathbb{R}^d,$$ where $γ\in [0, 2]$ and $Δ^γ_\infty$ is a $(3-γ)$-homogeneous operator associated with the infinity Laplacian. Under the assumptions $\liminf_{|x|\to\infty}\lim_{s\to0}f(x,s)/s^{3-γ}>0$ and $q$ is a continuous function vanishing at infinity, we construct a positive bounded solution to the equation and if $f(x,s)/s^{3-γ}$ decreasing in $s$, we further obtain the u…
We consider the elliptic differential operator defined as the sum of the minimum and the maximum eigenvalue of the Hessian matrix, which can be viewed as a degenerate elliptic Isaacs operator, in dimension larger than two. Despite of nonlinearity, degeneracy, non-concavity and non-convexity, such operator generally enjoys the qualitative properties of the Laplace operator, as for instance maximum and comparison principles, ABP and Harnack inequalities, Liouville theorems for subsolutions or supersolutions. Existence and uniqueness for the Dirichlet problem are also proved as well as local and …
We develop a new finite volume method using unstructured mesh-vertex grids for coupled systems modeling shallow water flows and solute transport over complex bottom topography. Novel well-balanced positivity preserving discretization techniques are proposed for the water surface elevation and the concentration of the pollutant. For the hydrodynamic system, the proposed scheme preserves the steady state of a lake at rest and the positivity of the water depth. For the scalar transport equation, the proposed method guarantees the positivity and a perfect balance of the scalar concentration. The c…
