The Vázquez maximum principle and the Landis conjecture for elliptic PDE with unbounded coefficients (Q2037615)

Let \(\Omega\subseteq {\mathbb R}^n\), \(n\geq 2\), be an arbitrary domain in which is given a real-valued uniformly elliptic second order operator, either in divergence form \[{\mathcal L}_D[u]:=\mathrm{div}(A(x)Du + b_1(x)u) + b_2(x){\cdot} Du +c(x) u,\] or in non-divergence form \[{\mathcal L}_{ND}[u]:=\mathrm{tr}(A(x)D^2u) + b_1(x)\cdot Du +c(x) u,\] or more generally a fully nonlinear Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman operator. Let \({\mathcal L}[u]\) denote any of these operators. It is assumed that \(A(x)\in L^\infty(\Omega)\) and the lower-order coefficients belong locally to Lebesgue spaces and may be unbounded. \par The authors prove a (weak) Harnack inequality with optimal dependence of the constants in the lower-order terms of the equation and the size of the domain. This inequality allows to establish the strong maximum principle for equations \({\mathcal L}[u] \leq f(u)\) with unbounded coefficients and non-Lipschitz nonlinearities. \par The second topic of the paper deals with the so called Landis conjecture. In the simplest case, this conjecture states that if a solution of the equation \(\Delta u +cu=0\) in an exterior domain decays faster than \(e^{-\kappa|x|}\), for some \(\kappa>\sqrt{\sup |V|}\), then it must be identically equal to \(0\). The Landis conjecture is still open nowadays in the real coefficients case for \(n > 3\). Using Harnack inequality the authors prove Landis conjecture for operators \({\mathcal L}[u]\) with unbounded lower order coefficients under assumption that \(\mathcal L\) satisfies the maximum principle in each bounded subdomain of \(\Omega\).