Harnack principle for weakly coupled elliptic systems (Q1369870)

The authors prove Harnack type inequality for the weakly coupled elliptic system \[ Su=\left(\begin{matrix} L_{1} & & \\ & \ddots & \\ & & L_{N}\end{matrix}\right)u+Qu\quad \text{ with}\quad u=\left(\begin{matrix} u_{1}\\ \vdots\\ u_{N}\end{matrix}\right). \tag{*} \] Here \[ L_{k}={1\over 2}\sum_{i,j=1}^{d} a_{ij}^{k}(x) {{\partial^{2}}\over{\partial x_{i}\partial x_{j}}} +\sum_{i=1}^{d} b_{i}^{k}(x){{\partial}\over{\partial x_{i}}},\quad k=1,\ldots,N \] are uniformly elliptic operators with coefficients \(a_{ij}^{k}(x)\), \(b_{i}^{k}(x)\) which are Hölder continuous functions on a \(d\)-dimensional domain \(D\). \(Q\) is an \(N\times N\) matrix-valued function, \(Q(x)=(q_{kl}(x))_{1\leq k,l\leq N}\), \(x\in D\), satisfying \(q_{kl}(x)\geq0\) almost everywhere on \(D\) for \(k\neq l\) and \(q_{kl}(x)\in K^{\text{loc}}_{d}\) for \(1\leq k,l\leq N\). The class \(K^{\text{loc}}_{d}\) consists of Borel measurable functions \(f\) which satisfy \[ \lim_{\alpha\downarrow 0}\left[\sup_{x\in B}\int_{|y-x|\leq\alpha}|f(y)|g(y-x)dy\right]=0 \] for each ball \(B\subset{\mathbb{R}}^{d}\), where \[ g(x)=|x|^{2-d} \quad\text{for } d\geq 3,\qquad g(x)=\ln |x|^{-1} \quad\text{for } d=2. \] The main results of the paper can be summarized as follows: Theorem 1. (Harnack principle). Let \(S\) be a weakly coupled elliptic operator \((*)\) and let \(K\) be a compact subset of \(D\). Then there exists a constant \(C\), such that for any continuous weak solution \(u\) of the system \(Su=0\) with \(u_{k}\geq0\) in \(D\) for \(k=1,\ldots,N\), one has \(u_{k}(x)\leq C u_{k}(x)\) \(\forall\;1\leq k\leq N\), \(\forall\;x, y\in K\). The weakly coupled elliptic operator \(S\) is called irreducible in \(D\) if for any distinguished \(k,l\in\{1,2,\ldots,N\}\) there exist finite many integers \(l_{0},\ldots,l_{n}\in\{1,2,\ldots,N\}\) with \(l_{i-1}\neq l_{i}\) for \(1\leq i\leq n\), \(l_{0}=k\) and \(l_{n}=l\) such that \(q_{l_{i-1}l_{i}}\not\equiv 0\) almost everywhere in \(D\). Theorem 2. (Full Harnack principle). Let \(S\) be an irreducible elliptic operator \((*)\) and let \(K\) be a compact subset of \(D\). Then there exists a constant \(C'\), such that for any continuous weak solution \(u\) of the system \(Su=0\) with \(u_{k}\geq0\) in \(D\) for \(k=1,\ldots,N\), we have \(u_{l}(x)\leq C' u_{k}(x)\) \(\forall\;1\leq k,l \leq N\), \(\forall\;x, y\in K\). The methods of the proofs are based on the representation and estimates of the Green function and the harmonic measure of \(S\) in small balls.