Counterexamples for unique continuation (Q1107658)

Let \(1<p<\infty\), \(n\geq 2\) and G be a domain in \({\mathbb{R}}^ n.\) Let \(\theta:G\to GL(n)\) be a Borel map such that for a.e. \(x\in G\) and \(h\in {\mathbb{R}}^ n\) \[ (1)\quad \alpha | h| \leq | \theta (x)h| \leq \beta | h|, \] and let A be given by \(A(x,h)=| \theta (x)h|^{p-2}\theta (x)\) *\(\theta\) (x)h. A well-known broad open problem is to find additional conditions, if any, on A so that solutions u of \[ (2)\quad div(A(x,\nabla u(x)))=0 \] satisfy the unique continuation property; that is, if u vanishes on \(D\subset C\), \(D\neq \emptyset\) and open, then u vanishes identically on G. In the linear case \((p=2)\) the unique continuation property holds for \(n=2\) and for \(n\geq 3\) whenever \(\theta \in C^{0,1}\) and it does not hold for \(n\geq 3\) and \(\theta \in C^{0,\alpha}\), \(\alpha <1\) [\textit{N. Garofalo} and \textit{Fang Hua Lin}, Indiana Univ. J. 35, 245-268 (1986)]. In the nonlinear case (p\(\neq 2)\) except for a few special situations in the plane \(n=2\) (for example when \(\theta\) (x)\(\equiv I\) [Bojarski-Iwaniec, preprint Univ. Bonn, or the reviewer, Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 103, No. 2, 473-479 (1988)]) not many cases are known for which we have unique continuation. In the plane uniqueness results can be proved using the theory of quasiregular mappings. For \(p=n\), equation (2) is quasi-invariant under a quasiregular mapping. One could hope to use quasiregular mappings to obtain uniqueness result in this case. In this paper Martio uses quasiregular mappings to exhibit a counterexample to unique continuation of a solution to (2). The beautiful proof combines explicit geometrical constructions for quasiregular mappings with analytical methods for degenerate equations as (2). By gluing together Zorich functions Martio builds a \(\theta\) (x) and u solution of (2) in \({\mathbb{R}}^ n\), nonidentically zero and vanishing in the lower half space \(x_ n<0\).