\(C^{\infty }\) regularity of solutions of an equation of Levi's type in \(\mathbb{R}^{2n+1}\) (Q1420355)

The authors study the regularity of the solutions of a class of partial differential equations modelled on the mean Levi-curvature equation \[ \mathcal{L}u=k(x,y,t,u)\frac{(1+\left|\nabla u\right|^{2})^{\frac{3}{2}}}{1+u_{t}^{2}}\text{,\;}(x,y,t)\in \text{ }\Omega \subset \mathbb{R} ^{n}\times \mathbb{R} ^{n}\times \mathbb{R} ,\tag{1} \] where \[ \mathcal{L}u =\sum_{i=1}^{n}\left( u_{x_{i}x_{i}}+u_{y_{i}y_{i}} +2\frac{u_{y_{i}}-u_{x_{i}}u_{t}}{1+u_{t}^{2}}u_{x_{i}t} -2\frac{u_{x_{i}}+u_{y_{i}}u_{t}}{1+u_{t}^{2}}u_{y_{i}t} +\frac{u_{x_{i}}^{2}+u_{y_{i}}^{2}}{1+u_{t}^{2}}u_{tt} \right) \] and \(k:\Omega \times \mathbb{R} \rightarrow \mathbb{R}\) is of class \(C^{\infty }\) , called mean Levi-curvature. The operator \(\mathcal{L}\) is represented as a sum of squares of nonlinear vector fields. By a freezing method the authors study the regularity properties of the solutions of a linear operator, which has the same structure as \(\mathcal{L}\). Applying these results they prove the main result of the paper : if the mean Levi-curvature is always different from zero, any solution of (1) of class \(C^{2,\alpha }\), with \(\alpha >\frac{1}{2}\), is of class \(C^{\infty }\).