We establish the validity of a strong unique continuation property for weakly coupled elliptic systems, including competitive ones. Our proof exploits the system structure and uses Carleman estimates. We apply this result to obtain some nonexistence results for critical systems.
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.
We establish the strong unique continuation property of fractional orders of linear elliptic equations with Lipschitz coefficients by establishing monotonicity of some Almgren-type frequency functional via an extension procedure.
We prove that solutions to elliptic equations in two variables in divergence form, possibly non-selfadjoint and with lower order terms, satisfy the strong unique continuation property.
We consider elliptic equations in planar domains with mixed boundary conditions of Dirichlet-Neumann type. Sharp asymptotic expansions of the solutions and unique continuation properties from the Dirichlet-Neumann junction are proved.
In this paper we develop a monotonicity formula for elliptic systems with Neumann boundary coupling, proving unique continuation and classification of blow-up profiles. As an application, we obtain strong unique continuation for some fourth order equations and higher order fractional problems.
We quantify the uniqueness of continuation from Cauchy or interior data. Our approach consists in extending the existing results in the linear case. As by product we obtain a new stability estimate in the linear case. We also show the so-called strong uniqueness of continuation and the uniqueness of continuation from a set of positive measure. These results are derived by using a linearization procedure.
In this paper, we give the strong unique continuation property for a general two dimensional anisotropic elliptic system with real coefficients in a Gevrey class under the assumption that the principal symbol of the system has simple characteristics. The strong unique continuation property is derived by obtaining some Carleman estimate. The derivation of the Carleman estimate is based on transforming the system to a larger second order elliptic system with diagonal principal part which has complex coefficients.
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.
Asymptotics of solutions to fractional elliptic equations with Hardy type potentials is studied in this paper. By using an Almgren type monotonicity formula, separation of variables, and blow-up arguments, we describe the exact behavior near the singularity of solutions to linear and semilinear fractional elliptic equations with a homogeneous singular potential related to the fractional Hardy inequality. As a consequence we obtain unique continuation properties for fractional elliptic equations.
In this paper we prove unique continuation principles for some systems of elliptic partial differential equations satisfying a suitable superlinearity condition. As an application, we obtain nonexistence of nontrivial (not necessarily positive) radial solutions for the Lane-Emden system posed in a ball, in the critical and supercritical regimes. Some of our results also apply to general fully nonlinear operators, such as Pucci's extremal operators, being new even for scalar equations.
We study local asymptotics of solutions to fractional elliptic equations at boundary points, under some outer homogeneous Dirichlet boundary condition. Our analysis is based on a blow-up procedure which involves some Almgren type monotonicity formulae and provides a classification of all possible homogeneity degrees of limiting entire profiles. As a consequence, we establish a strong unique continuation principle from boundary points.
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…
We prove a quantitative, large-scale doubling inequality and large-scale three-ellipsoid inequality for solutions of uniformly elliptic equations with periodic coefficients. These estimates are optimal in terms of the minimal length scale on which they are valid, and are at least "almost" optimal in the prefactor constants--up to, at most, an iterated logarithm of the initial doubling ratio.
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 prove that a solution of an elliptic operator with periodic coefficients behaves on large scales like an analytic function, in the sense of approximation by polynomials with periodic corrections. Equivalently, the constants in the large-scale $C^{k,1}$ estimate scale exponentially in $k$, just as for the classical estimate for harmonic functions. As a consequence, we characterize entire solutions of periodic, uniformly elliptic equations which exhibit growth like $O(\exp(δ|x|))$ for small~$δ>0$. The large-scale analyticity also implies quantitative unique continuation results, namely a thre…
We show that a viscosity solution of a uniformly elliptic, fully nonlinear equation which vanishes on an open set must be identically zero, provided that the equation is $C^{1,1}$. We do not assume that the nonlinearity is convex or concave, and thus \emph{a priori} $C^2$ estimates are unavailable. Nevertheless, we use the boundary Harnack inequality and a regularity result for solutions with small oscillations to prove that the solution must be smooth at an appropriate point on the boundary of the set on which it is assumed to vanish. This then permits us to conclude with an application of a …
We give stability estimates in the Cauchy problem for general partial differential equation of the elliptic type similar to the Helmholtz equation. We do not impose any (pseudo)convexity assumptions on the domain or the operator. These conditional stability estimates are getting close to Lipschitz ones when the wave number/frequency is growing. We split solution into low and high frequency parts and impose constraints on the high frequency part only. We give logarithmic bounds on this high frequency part. Proofs use energy estimates and the FBI transform.
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 …
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…
In this paper we prove strong unique continuation for the following degenerate elliptic equation \begin{equation}\label{e0} Δ_zu +|z|^2\partial_t^2u = Vu,\quad (z,t) \in \mathbb{R}^N \times \mathbb{R} \end{equation} where the potential $V$ satisfies either of the following growth assumptions \begin{align} & |V(z,t)| \leq \frac{f(ρ(z,t))}{ρ(z,t)^2},\ \text{where $f$ satisfies the Dini integrability condition as in (1.3)} \\ & \text{or when } \notag \\ & |V(z,t)| \leq C\frac{ψ(z,t)^ε}{ρ(z,t)^2},\ \text{for some $ε>0$ with $ψ$ as in (2.6) and $N$ even.} \notag \end{align} This extends some of the…
In this paper we describe some recent works on quantitative unique continuation for elliptic, parabolic and dispersive equations. The elliptic results are joint work with J.Bourgain, while the remainder of the works discussed are joint works with L.Escauriaza, G.Ponce and L.Vega.
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.
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 consider elliptic differential operators on either the entire Euclidean space $\mathbb{R}^d$ or on subsets consisting of a cube $Λ_L$ of integer length $L$. For eigenfunctions of the operator, and more general solutions of elliptic differential quations, we derive several quantitative unique continuation results. The first result is of local nature and estimates the vanishing order of a solution. The second is a sampling result and compares the $L^2$-norm of a solution over a union of equidistributed $δ$-balls in space with the $L^2$-norm on the entire space. In the case where the space $\m…
We address the quantitative uniqueness properties of the solutions of the parabolic equation $ \partial_t u - Δu = w_j (x,t) \partial_j u + v(x,t) u $ where $v$ and $w$ are bounded. We prove that for solutions $u$, the order of vanishing is bounded by $C(\Vert v\Vert_{L^\infty}^{2/3}+\Vert w\Vert_{L^\infty}^2)$ matching the upper bound previously established in the elliptic case. in the elliptic case.
This paper studies the quantitative unique continuation for a semi-linear parabolic-elliptic coupled system on a bounded domain. This system is a simplified version of the chemotaxis model introduced by Keller and Segel. With the aid of priori L^infty-estimates (for solutions of the system) built up in this paper, we treat the semi-linear parabolic equation in the system as a linear parabolic equation, and then use the frequency function method and the localization technique to build up two unique continuation inequalities for the system. As a consequence of the above-mentioned two inequalitie…
Asymptotics of solutions to relativistic fractional elliptic equations with Hardy type potentials is established in this paper. As a consequence, unique continuation properties are obtained.
In this survey we discuss the frequency function method so as to study the problem of unique continuation for elliptic partial differential equations. The methods used in the note were mainly introduced by Garofalo and Lin.
A Carleman estimate and the unique continuation property of solutions for a multi-terms time fractional diffusion equation up to order $α\,\,(0<α<2)$ and general time dependent second order strongly elliptic time elliptic operator for the diffusion. The estimate is derived via some subelliptic estimate for an operator associated to this equation using calculus of pseudo-differential operators. A special Holmgren type transformation which is linear with respect to time is used to show the local unique continuation of solutions. We developed a new argument to derive the global unique continuatio…
We consider the problem of the strong unique continuation for an elasticity system with general residual stress. Due to the known counterexamples, we assume the coefficients of the elasticity system are in the Gevrey class of appropriate indices. The main tools are Carleman estimates for product of two second order elliptic operators.
We establish the existence of a nonnegative fully nontrivial solution to a non-variational weakly coupled competitive elliptic system. We show that this kind of solutions belong to a topological manifold of Nehari-type, and apply a degree-theoretical argument on this manifold to derive existence.
In this paper we establish the \emph{space-like} strong unique continuation for nonlocal equations of the type $(\partial_t - Δ)^s u= Vu$, for $0<s <1$. The proof of our main result, Theorem 1.1, is achieved via a conditional elliptic type doubling property for solutions to the appropriate extension problem, followed by a blowup analysis.
In this paper, we establish space like strong unique continuation property (sucp) for uniformly parabolic sublinear equations under appropriate structural assumptions. Our main result Theorem 1.1 constitutes the parabolic counterpart of the strong unique continuation result recently established by Ruland in [Ru] for analogous elliptic sublinear equations. Similar to that in [Ru], this is accomplished via a new $L^{2}-L^{2}$ type Carleman estimate for a class of sublinear parabolic operators.
We derive local asymptotics of solutions to second order elliptic equations at the edge of a $(N-1)$-dimensional crack, with homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions prescribed on both sides of the crack. A combination of blow-up analysis and monotonicity arguments provides a classification of all possible asymptotic homogeneities of solutions at the crack's tip, together with a a strong unique continuation principle.
In this paper we establish periodic homogenization for Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equations, associated to nonlocal operators of integro-differential type. We consider the case when the fractional diffusion has the same order as the drift term, and is weakly elliptic. The outcome of the paper is twofold. One one hand, we provide Lipschitz regularity results for weakly elliptic non-local HJB, extending the results previously obtained in [8]. On the other hand, we establish a convergence result, based on half relaxed limits and a comparison principle for the effective problem. The latter stro…
This course is intended as an introduction to the analysis of elliptic partial differential equations. The objective is to provide a large overview of the different aspects of elliptic partial differential equations and their modern treatment. Besides variational and Schauder methods we study the unique continuation property and the stability for Cauchy problems. The derivation of the unique continuation property and the stability for Cauchy problems relies on a Carleman inequality. This inequality is efficient to establish three-ball type inequalities which are the main tool in the continuati…
We consider an elliptic equation in a cone, endowed with (possibly inhomogeneous) Neumann conditions. The operator and the forcing terms can also allow non-Lipschitz singularities at the vertex of the cone. In this setting, we provide unique continuation results, both in terms of interior and boundary points. The proof relies on a suitable Almgren-type frequency formula with remainders. As a byproduct, we obtain classification results for blow-up limits.
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.
The main purpose of this paper is to exhibit a simple variational setting for finding fully nontrivial solutions to the weakly coupled elliptic system (1.1). We show that such solutions correspond to critical points of a $\mathcal{C}^1$-functional $Ψ:\mathcal{U}\to\mathbb{R}$ defined in an open subset $\mathcal{U}$ of the product $\mathcal{T}:=S_1\times\cdots\times S_M$ of unit spheres $S_i$ in an appropriate Sobolev space. We use our abstract setting to extend and complement some known results for the system (1.1).
We derive the unique continuation property of a class of semi-linear elliptic equations with non-Lipschitz nonlinearities. The simplest type of equations to which our results apply is given as $-Δu = |u|^{σ-1} u$ in a domain $Ω\subset \mathbb{R}^N$, with $0 \le σ<1$. Despite the sublinear character of the nonlinear term, we prove that if a solution vanishes in an open subset of $Ω$, then it vanishes necessarily in the whole $Ω$. We then extend the result to equations with variable coefficients operators and inhomogeneous right-hand side.
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 paper, we obtain a quantitative estimate of unique continuation and an observability inequality from an equidistributed set for solutions of the diffusion equation in the whole space RN. This kind of observability indicates that the total energy of solutions can be controlled by the energy localized in a measurable subset, which is equidistributed over the whole space. The proof of our results is based on an interesting reduction method [18, 22], as well as the propagation of smallness for the gradient of solutions to elliptic equations [24].
We investigate unique continuation properties and asymptotic behaviour at boundary points for solutions to a class of elliptic equations involving the spectral fractional Laplacian. An extension procedure leads us to study a degenerate or singular equation on a cylinder, with a homogeneous Dirichlet boundary condition on the lateral surface and a non homogeneous Neumann condition on the basis. For the extended problem, by an Almgren-type monotonicity formula and a blow-up analysis, we classify the local asymptotic profiles at the edge where the transition between boundary conditions occurs. Pa…
We consider the following critical weakly coupled elliptic system \[ \begin{cases} -Δu_i = μ_i |u_i|^{2^*-2}u_i + \sum_{j \neq i} β_{ij} |u_j|^{\frac{2^*}{2}} |u_i|^{\frac{2^*-4}{2}} u_i & \text{in $Ω_\varepsilon$} u_i >0 & \text{in $Ω_\varepsilon$} u_i = 0 & \text{on $\partial Ω_\varepsilon$},\end{cases} \qquad i =1,\dots,m, \] in a domain $Ω_\varepsilon \subset \mathbb{R}^N$, $N=3,4$, with small shrinking holes as the parameter $\varepsilon \to 0$. We prove the existence of positive solutions of two different types: either each density concentrates around a different hole, or we have groups …
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.
We establish two Phragmén--Lindelöf theorems for a fully nonlinear elliptic equation. We consider a dynamic boundary condition that includes both spatial variable and time derivative terms. As a spatial term, we consider a non-linear Neumann-type operator with a strict monotonicity in the normal direction of the boundary on the spatial derivative term. Our first result is for an elliptic equation on an epigraph in $\mathbb{R}^n$. Because we assume a good structural condition, which includes wide classes of elliptic equations as well as uniformly elliptic equations, we can benefit from the stro…
In this paper we analyze some properties of a sixth order elliptic operator arising in the framework of the strain gradient linear elasticity theory for nanoplates in flexural deformation. We first rigorously deduce the weak formulation of the underlying Neumann problem as well as its well posedness. Under some suitable smoothness assumptions on the coefficients and on the geometry we derive interior and boundary regularity estimates for the solution of the Neumann problem. Finally, for the case of isotropic materials, we obtain new Strong Unique Continuation results in the interior, in the fo…
