Note on a sign-dependent regularity for the polyharmonic Dirichlet problem (Q2227224)

In the present paper the authors study the following Dirichlet problem for polyharmonic functions: \begin{align*} &(-\Delta)^m u =f \,\,\text{in}\,\,\Omega, \\ &(\partial_n)^k u=0, \,\,\,k=0,\dots,m-1,\,\,\text{on}\,\,\partial \Omega. \end{align*} Here \(\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^n\) is a bounded domain with boundary \(\partial \Omega \in C^{2m,\gamma}\) with \(\gamma \in (0,1)\). In general, one has no maximum principle or positivity preserving property for Sobolev solutions in the case \(m \geq 2\). The right-hand side \(f\) is presented as \(f=f^+-f^-\), where, as usually, \(f^+:=\max\{0;f\}\) and \(f^-:=\max\{0;-f\}\). The regularity of \(f\) is separated as regularity for \(f^+\) and \(f^-\). The authors suppose that \(f^+ \in L^{p_+}(\Omega)\) and \(f^- \in L^{p_-}(\Omega)\) with \(p_+,p_- \in (1,\infty)\). Let \(u^\oplus\), \(u^\ominus\) be the Sobolev solution to the above Dirichlet problem with right-hand side \(f^+\), \(f^-\), respectively. The main goal of the authors is to prove that the unique solution \(u \in W^{2m,p}(\Omega) \cap W_0^{m,p}(\Omega)\), \(p=\min\{p_-;p_+\}\), can be written as \(u=u^\oplus-u^\ominus\) with \begin{align*} & 0 \leq u^\oplus \in W^{2m,p_+}(\Omega) \cap W_0^{m,p_+}(\Omega), \,\,\,0 \leq u^\ominus \in W^{2m,p_-}(\Omega) \cap W_0^{m,p_-}(\Omega),\\ & \|u^\oplus\|_{W^{2m,p_+}(\Omega)} \leq c_{p_+,m}\big(\|f^+\|_{L^{p_+}(\Omega)}+ \|f^-\|_{L^{1}(\Omega)}\big),\\ & \|u^\ominus\|_{W^{2m,p_-}(\Omega)} \leq c_{p_-,m}\big(\|f^-\|_{L^{p_-}(\Omega)}+ \|f^+\|_{L^{1}(\Omega)}\big). \end{align*} Using \(-u^\ominus \leq -u^- \leq 0 \leq u^+ \leq u^\oplus\) these results lead to a-priori estimates for \(u^+\), \(u^-\), \(\sup u\) and \(\sup -u\).