Compactness methods for certain degenerate elliptic equations (Q1319941)

The \(C^{1,\alpha}\) regularity of \(p\)-harmonic functions is proved using compactness methods. The function \(u \in C^{1,a}(\Omega)\) is called \(p\)-harmonic function, if it minimizes the functional \(\int_{\Omega}| \nabla v|^ p dx\), where \(\Omega\) is a bounded, smooth, open subset of \(\mathbb{R}^ n\). The function minimizing this functional is a solution of the elliptic equation \[ \nabla(| \nabla u|^{p-2} \nabla u) = 0,\tag{1} \] degenerating when \(u = 0\). The author proves \(C^{1,\alpha}\) regularity for \(p\)-harmonic functions using the methods of \(\varepsilon\)-regularization according to the size of the slope of \(u\). The main theorem is the following: Let \(u\) be a weak solution of (1). Suppose \(| u| \leq 1\) in \(B_ 2 \subset \Omega\). Then \(\| u\|_{C^{1,\alpha}(B_ 1)} \leq C(n,p)\) for some \(\alpha > 0\). Here \(B_ r\) is the ball \(\{x \mid | x| \leq r\}\).