A note on the strong maximum principle for fully nonlinear equations on Riemannian manifolds (Q2050639)

Let \((M,g)\) be a Riemannian manifold, \(\Omega\subset M\) a connected open set, and \(J^2M\) the \(2\)-jet bundle on \(M\). In this paper, strong maximum and comparison principles for viscosity solutions of the equation \(F(x,u,\mathrm{d}u,D^2u)=0\) are established. Here, \(F:J^2M\rightarrow \mathbb{R}\) is a function satisfying certain monotonicity, ellipticity and regularity assumptions, \(\mathrm{d}\) is the exterior derivative on \(M\), \(D\) is the Levi-Civita covariant derivative on \((M, g)\), and \(D^2\) is the Hessian operator defined by \(D^2\varphi =D(\mathrm{d}\varphi)\). The obtained results are applicable to a wide class of fully nonlinear elliptic equations, including equations driven by Pucci's extremal, \(p\)-Laplace Beltrami, \(\infty\)-Laplacian and mean curvature operators. The proof of the strong maximum principle relies on a barrier-type argument for viscosity solutions.