Imaginary powers of elliptic second order differential operators in \(L^ p\)-spaces (Q1261772)

This paper is concerned with the uniform boundedness of the pure imaginary powers of the operator \(E_ p\) which is the realization of a second order elliptic operator \[ Eu=- \sum_{i,j=1}^ n a_{jk} \partial_ j \partial_ k u+ \sum_{j=1}^ n b_ j \partial_ j u+cu \] in the space \(L^ p(\Omega)\) under Dirichlet boundary condition. The authors establish the desired result \(\| E_ p^{iy}\| <Ke^{\theta| y|}\) for all \(y\in\mathbb{R}\) as well as some related results under very weak assumptions on the smoothness of the coefficients \(a_{jk}\), \(b_ j\), \(c\) and the boundary of the domain \(\Omega\) by a rather elementary method. The case of unbounded domains is also included, and the result is sharp in the sense that the obtained value of \(\theta\) is best possible.