Existence and regularity of the solutions to degenerate elliptic equations in Carnot-Carathéodory spaces (Q2192895)

The authors study the existence and regularity of weak solutions to the Dirichlet problem \[ \left\{\begin{array}{ll} -\text{div}(A(x)X(u))+b(x)X(u)+c(x)u=f \ \ \ \ &\text{in} \ \ \Omega\\[3mm] u=0 &\text{on} \ \ \partial\Omega, \end{array}\right. \] where \(\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^n\) is an open bounded domain, \(A:\Omega \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{n\times n}\) is a symmetric matrix satisfying the anisotropic condition \[ \frac{|\xi|^2}{K(x)}\leq \langle A(x)\xi,\xi \rangle \leq K(x)|\xi|^2, \ \ \ \ \text{for all} \ \ \xi \in \mathbb{R}^n, \ \ \text{for a.e.} \ \ x\in \Omega,\] with \(K:\Omega\rightarrow [1,+\infty)\) locally summable, \(b\in L^{\frac{2q}{q-2}}(\Omega, Kdx)\), \(c\in L^{\frac{q}{q-2}}(\Omega, Kdx)\), for some suitable \(q>2\), and \(X=(X_1,\dots,X_K)\) is a family of smooth vector fields satisfying the H\"ormander conditions. An existence result of weak solutions in \(\mathcal{H}_L(\Omega)\) is established for every \(f\in \mathcal{H}_L'(\Omega)\), provided the \(\|b\|_{L^{\frac{2q}{q-2}}(\Omega, Kdx)}\), \(\|c\|_{L^{\frac{2q}{q-2}}(\Omega, Kdx)}\) are sufficiently small, and \(K\) belongs to the Muckenhoupt class \(A_2\) and satisfies a reverse H\"older inequality in \(\Omega\) with a suitably exponent \(\tau\). Here \(\mathcal{H}_L(\Omega)\) is the Hilbert space given by the closure, with respect to the norm \[\|u\|:=\left(\int_\Omega \langle AXu(x),Xu(x)\rangle dx\right)^{\frac{1}{2}},\] of the space of Lipschitz functions \(u\in \Omega\rightarrow \mathbb{R}\) with compact support. The authors also establish some \(L^\theta(\Omega,Kdx)\)-summability results, with \(\theta>q\), for weak solutions in the case \(f=g-\text{div}(F)\), with \(g\in L^2(\Omega, \frac{1}{K}dx)\) and \(F\in L^q(\Omega, Kdx)\).