Sharp gradient estimates for quasilinear elliptic equations with \(p(x)\) growth on nonsmooth domains (Q1744586)

This paper deals with Calderón-Zygmund type bounds for the boundary value problem \[ \begin{aligned} \text{div\,}A(x,\nabla u)= \text{div}(|f|^{p(x)-2}f)\quad &\text{in }\Omega,\\ u= 0\quad &\text{on }\partial\Omega,\end{aligned} \] where \(\Omega\) is bounded domain in \(\mathbb{R}^n\) and the quasilinear elliptic operator \(A(x,\nabla u)\) is modelled after the \(p(x)\)-Laplacian having the form \(|\nabla u|^{p(x)-2}\nabla u\). \textit{S.-S. Byun} and \textit{J. Ok} [J. Math. Pures Appl. (9) 106, No. 3, 512--545 (2016; Zbl 1344.35058)] obtained the following Calderón-Zygmund type relation \[ |f|^{p(\cdot)}\in L^{q(\cdot)}(\Omega)\Rightarrow|\nabla u|^{p(\cdot)}\in L^{q(\cdot)}(\Omega)\tag{1} \] for any \(1<q^-\leq q(\cdot)\leq q^+<\infty\) with \(q(\cdot)\) being log-Hölder continuous. To do this they suppose that the nonlinearity \(A\) satisfies a small BMO condition and \(\Omega\) is suitably flat in the sense of Reifenberg. In this paper, the authors allow \(q^-=1\) (i.e., the end-point case of (1) is admissible). The sufficiently flat domains in the sense of Reifenberg include domains with fractal boundaries but exclude convex domains with sufficiently sharp corners. In the paper under consideration the end-point estimate is verified for quasiconvex domains. They contain both Reifenberg flat domains and convex domains. The bounded measurable real-valued function \(p(x)\) belongs to the log-Hölder class and \(1<p^-\leq p(x)\leq p^+<\infty\).