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 obtain a unique continuation result for fractional Schrödinger operators with potential in Morrey spaces. This is based on Carleman inequalities for fractional Laplacians.
We show Carleman estimates, observability inequalities and null controllability results for parabolic equations with non smooth coefficients degenerating at an interior point.
In this paper we derive Carleman estimates for the fractional relativistic operator. We consider changing-sign solutions to the heat equation for such operators. We prove monotonicity inequalities and convexity of certain energy functionals to deduce Carleman estimates with linear exponential weight. Our approach is based on spectral methods and functional calculus.
General Hardy-Carleman type inequalities for Dirac operators are proved. New inequalities are derived involving particular traditionally used weight functions. In particular, a version of the Agmon inequality and Treve type inequalities are established. The case of a Dirac particle in a (potential) magnetic field is also considered. The methods used are direct and based on quadratic form techniques.
We obtain a complete characterization of $L^p-L^q$ Carleman estimates with weight $e^{v\cdot x}$ for the polyharmonic operators. Our result extends the Carleman inequalities for the Laplacian due to Kenig--Ruiz--Sogge. Consequently, we obtain new unique continuation properties of higher order Schrödinger equations relaxing the integrability assumption on the solution spaces.
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 L…
In this article we present a new strategy of addressing the (variable coefficient) thin obstacle problem. Our approach is based on a (variable coefficient) Carleman estimate. This yields semi-continuity of the vanishing order, lower and uniform upper growth bounds of solutions and sufficient compactness properties in order to carry out a blow-up procedure. Moreover, the Carleman estimate implies the existence of homogeneous blow-up limits along certain sequences and ultimately leads to an almost optimal regularity statement. As it is a very robust tool, it allows us to consider the problem in …
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…
We consider a parabolic problem with degeneracy in the interior of the spatial domain, and we focus on controllability results through Carleman estimates for the associated adjoint problem. The novelty of the present paper is that the degeneracy is also in the interior of the control region, so that no previous result can be adapted to this situation.
We consider the transport equation $\ppp_t u(x,t) + H(t)\cdot \nabla u(x,t) = 0$ in $\OOO\times(0,T),$ where $T>0$ and $\OOO\subset \R^d $ is a bounded domain with smooth boundary $\ppp\OOO$. First, we prove a Carleman estimate for solutions of finite energy with piecewise continuous weight functions. Then, under a further condition which guarantees that the orbits of $H$ intersect $\ppp\OOO$, we prove an energy estimate which in turn yields an observability inequality. Our results are motivated by applications to inverse problems.
We consider a parabolic problem with degeneracy in the interior of the spatial domain and Neumann boundary conditions. In particular, we will focus on the well-posedness of the problem and on Carleman estimates for the associated adjoint problem. The novelty of the present paper is that for the first time it is considered a problem with an interior degeneracy and Neumann boundary conditions so that no previous result can be adapted to this situation. As a consequence new observability inequalities are established.
We establish new Carleman estimates for the wave equation, which we then apply to derive novel observability inequalities for a general class of linear wave equations. The main features of these inequalities are that (a) they apply to a fully general class of time-dependent domains, with timelike moving boundaries, (b) they apply to linear wave equations in any spatial dimension and with general time-dependent lower-order coefficients, and (c) they allow for significantly smaller time-dependent regions of observations than allowed from existing Carleman estimate methods. As a standard applicat…
In this paper we prove an observability inequality for a degenerate transport equation. First we introduce a local in time Carleman estimate for the degenerate equation, then we apply it to obtain a global in time observability inequality by using also an energy estimate.
We establish a new family of Carleman inequalities for wave operators on cylindrical spacetime domains containing a potential that is critically singular, diverging as an inverse square on all the boundary of the domain. These estimates are sharp in the sense that they capture both the natural boundary conditions and the natural $H^1$-energy. The proof is based around three key ingredients: the choice of a novel Carleman weight with rather singular derivatives on the boundary, a generalization of the classical Morawetz inequality that allows for inverse-square singularities, and the systematic…
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.
We use Pitt inequalities for the Fourier transform to prove the following weighted gradient inequality $$ \|e^{-τ\ell(\cdot)} u^{\frac 1q} f\|_q\leq c_τ\| e^{-τ\ell(\cdot)} v^{\frac 1p}\, \nabla f\|_p, \quad f\in C^\infty_0( R^n). $$ This inequality is a Carleman-type estimate that yields unique continuation results for solutions of first order differential equations and systems.
In this paper, we prove a Carleman estimate for fully-discrete approximations of parabolic operators in which the discrete parameters $h$ and $\triangle t$ are connected to the large Carleman parameter. We use this estimate to obtain relaxed observability inequalities which yield, by duality, controllability results for fully-discrete linear and semilinear parabolic equations.
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.
We show explicit forms for extremals of some fourth-order sharp trace inequalities on the unit balls recently proved by Ache-Chang. We also give a classification result of the bi-harmonic equation on $\mathbb{R}^4_+$ with some conformally covariant boundary conditions.
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…
Motivared by Carleman's proof of the isoperimetric inequality in the plane, we study some sharp integral inequalities for harmonic functions on the upper halfspace. We also derive the regularity for nonnegative solutions of the associated integral system and some Liouville type theorems.
In this paper we study the local behavior of a solution to the Lamé system when the Lamé coefficients $λ$ and $μ$ satisfy that $μ$ is Lipschitz and $λ$ is essentially bounded in dimension $n\ge 2$. One of the main results is the \emph{local} doubling inequality for the solution of the Lamé system. This is a quantitative estimate of the strong unique continuation property. Our proof relies on Carleman estimates with carefully chosen weights. Furthermore, we also prove the \emph{global} doubling inequality, which is useful in some inverse problems.
The mean value inequality is characteristic for upper semicontinuous functions to be subharmonic. Quasinearly subharmonic functions generalize subharmonic functions. We find the necessary and sufficient conditions under which subsets of balls are big enough for the catheterization of nonnegative, quasinearly subharmonic functions by mean value inequalities. Similar result is obtained also for generalized mean value inequalities where, instead of balls, we consider arbitrary bounded sets which have nonvoid interiors and instead of the volume of ball some functions depending on the radius of thi…
We study the existence and nonexistence of positive singular solutions to second-order non-divergence type elliptic inequalities with measurable coefficients. We prove the existence of a critical value $p^*$ that separates the existence region from non-existence. In the critical case $p=p^*$ we show that the existence of a singular solution depends on the rate at which the coefficients stabilize at zero and we provide some optimal conditions in this setting.
Inspired by a recent sharp Sobolev trace inequality of order four on the balls $\mathbb B^{n+1}$ found by Ache and Chang [AC15], we propose a slightly different approach to reprove Ache-Chang's trace inequality. To illustrate this approach, we reprove the classical Sobolev trace inequality of order two on $\mathbb B^{n+1}$ and provide sharp Sobolev trace inequalities of orders six and eight on $\mathbb B^{n+1}$. As the limiting case of the Sobolev trace inequality, a Lebedev-Milin type inequality of order up to eight is also considered.
In this paper we study the local behavior of a solution to the Lamé system with \emph{Lipschitz} coefficients in dimension $n\ge 2$. Our main result is the bound on the vanishing order of a nontrivial solution, which immediately implies the strong unique continuation property. This paper solves the open problem of the strong uniqueness continuation property for the Lamé system with Lipschitz coefficients in any dimension.
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].
The aim of these notes is to describe some recent results concerning dispersive estimates for principally normal pseudodifferential operators. The main motivation for this comes from unique continuation problems. Such estimates can be used to prove Carleman inequalities, which in turn yield unique continuation results for various partial differential operators with rough potentials.
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.
We study extremal functions for a family of Poincaré-Sobolev-type inequalities. These functions minimize, for subcritical or critical $p\geq 2$, the quotient ${\|\nabla u\|_2}/{\|u\|_p}$ among all $u \in H^1(B)\setminus\{0\}$ with $\int_{B}u=0$. Here $B$ is the unit ball in $\mathbb{R}^N$. We show that the minimizers are axially symmetric with respect to a line passing through the origin. We also show that they are strictly monotone in the direction of this line. In particular, they take their maximum and minimum precisely at two antipodal points on the boundary of $B$. We also prove that, for…
In this work, we transform the equation in the upper half space first studied by Caffarelli and Silvestre to an equation in the Euclidean unit ball $\mathbb{B}^n$. We identify the Poisson kernel for the equation in the unit ball. Using the Poisson kernel, we define the extension operator. We prove an extension inequality in the limit case and prove the uniqueness of the extremal functions in the limit case using the method of moving spheres. In addition we offer an interpretation of the limit case inequality as a conformally invariant generalization of Carleman's inequality.
In this work, we present some new Carleman inequalities for Stokes and Oseen equations with non-homogeneous boundary conditions. These estimates lead to log type stability inequalities for the problem of recovering the solution of the Stokes and Navier-Stokes equations from both boundary and distributed observations. These inequalities fit the well-known unique continuation result of Fabre and Lebeau [18]: the distributed observation only depends on interior measurement of the velocity, and the boundary observation only depends on the trace of the velocity and of the Cauchy stress tensor measu…
We prove sharp homogeneous improvements to $L^1$ weighted Hardy inequalities involving distance from the boundary. In the case of a smooth domain, we obtain lower and upper estimates for the best constant of the remainder term. These estimates are sharp in the sense that they coincide when the domain is a ball or an infinite strip. In the case of a ball, we also obtain further improvements.
We establish three families of Sobolev trace inequalities of orders two and four in the unit ball under higher order moments constraint, and are able to construct \emph{smooth} test functions to show all such inequalities are \emph{almost optimal}. Some distinct feature in \emph{almost sharpness} examples between the fourth order and second order Sobolev trace inequalities is discovered. This has been neglected in higher order Sobolev inequality case in \cite{Hang}. As a byproduct, the method of our construction can be used to show the sharpness of the generalized Lebedev-Milin inequality unde…
The approach to Lipschitz stability for uniformly parabolic equations introduced by Imanuvilov and Yamamoto in 1998, based on Carleman estimates, seems hard to apply to the case of Grushin-type operators of interest to this paper. Indeed, such estimates are still missing for parabolic operators degenerating in the interior of the space domain. Nevertheless, we are able to prove Lipschitz stability results for inverse source problems for such operators, with locally distributed measurements in arbitrary space dimension. For this purpose, we follow a mixed strategy which combines the appraoch du…
We prove that the second nontrivial Neumann eigenvalue of the Laplace-Beltrami operator on the unit sphere $\mathbb{S}^n \subseteq \mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ is maximized by the union of two disjoint, equal, geodesic balls among all subsets of $\mathbb{S}^n$ of prescribed volume. In fact, the result holds in a stronger version, involving the harmonic mean of the eigenvalues of order $2$ to $n$, and extends to densities. A (surprising) consequence occurs on the maximality of a geodesic ball for the first nontrivial eigenvalue under the volume constraint: the hemisphere inclusion condition of the Ashbaug…
Let $Ω$ be a bounded $C^{2}$ domain in $\R^n$, and let $Ω^{\ast}$ be the Euclidean ball centered at 0 and having the same Lebesgue measure as $Ω$. Consider the operator $L=-÷(A\nabla)+v\cdot \nabla +V$ on $Ω$ with Dirichlet boundary condition. We prove that minimizing the principal eigenvalue of $L$ when the Lebesgue measure of $Ω$ is fixed and when $A$, $v$ and $V$ vary under some constraints is the same as minimizing the principal eigenvalue of some operators $L^*$ in the ball $Ω^*$ with smooth and radially symmetric coefficients. The constraints which are satisfied by the original coefficie…
In this paper we first introduce quermassintegrals for free boundary hypersurfaces in the $(n+1)$-dimensional Euclidean unit ball. Then we solve some related isoperimetric type problems for convex free boundary hypersurfaces, which lead to new Alexandrov-Fenchel inequalities. In particular, for $n=2$ we obtain a Minkowski-type inequality and for $n=3$ we obtain an optimal Willmore-type inequality. To prove these estimates, we employ a specifically designed locally constrained inverse harmonic mean curvature flow with free boundary.
The approach to Lipschitz stability for uniformly parabolic equations introduced by Imanuvilov and Yamamoto in 1998 based on Carleman estimates, seems hard to apply to the case of Grushin-type operators studied in this paper. Indeed, such estimates are still missing for parabolic operators degenerating in the interior of the space domain. Nevertheless, we are able to prove Lipschitz stability results for inverse coefficient problems for such operators, with locally distributed measurements in arbitrary space dimension. For this purpose, we follow a strategy that combines Fourier decomposition …
We study the Hardy inequality when the singularity is placed on the boundary of a bounded domain in $\mathbb{R}^n$ that satisfies both an interior and exterior ball condition at the singularity. We obtain the sharp Hardy constant $n^2/4$ in case the exterior ball is large enough and show the necessity of the large exterior ball condition. We improve Hardy inequality with the best constant by adding a sharp Sobolev term. We next produce criteria that lead to characterizing maximal potentials that improve Hardy inequality. Breaking the criteria one produces successive improvements with sharp con…
We establish sharp Sobolev inequalities of order four on Euclidean d-balls for d greater than or equal to four. When d=4, our inequality generalizes the classical second order Lebedev-Milin inequality on Euclidean 2-balls. Our method relies on the use of scattering theory on hyperbolic d-balls. As an application, we charcaterize the extremals of the main term in the log-determinant formula corresponding to the conformal Laplacian coupled with the boundary Robin operator on Euclidean 4-balls.
Motivated by a recent work of Ache and Chang concerning the sharp Sobolev trace inequality and Lebedev-Milin inequalities of order four on the Euclidean unit ball, we derive such inequalities on the Euclidean unit ball for higher order derivatives. By using, among other things, the scattering theory on hyperbolic spaces and the generalized Poisson kernel, we obtain the explicit formulas of extremal functions of such inequations. Moreover, we also derive the sharp trace Sobolev inequalities on half spaces for higher order derivatives. Finally, we compute the explicit formulas of adapted metric,…
In this article, we present two different approaches for obtaining quantitative inequalities in the context of parabolic optimal control problems. Our model consists of a linearly controlled heat equation with Dirichlet boundary condition $(u_f)_t-Δu_f=f$, $f$ being the control. We seek to maximise the functional $\mathcal J_T(f):=\frac12\int_{(0;T)\times Ω} u_f^2$ or, for some $ε>0$, $\mathcal J_T^ε(f):=\frac12\int_{(0;T)\times Ω} u_f^2+ε\int_Ωu_f^2(T,\cdot)$ and to obtain quantitative estimates for these maximisation problems. We offer two approaches in the case where the domain $Ω$ is a bal…
