Carleson perturbations of elliptic operators on domains with low dimensional boundaries (Q2227549)

The main two theorems of this paper establish the fact that solvability of Dirichlet problems \(Lu=0\) (for certain degenerate elliptic operators \(L_0\)) on domains \(\Omega =\mathbb{R}^n\setminus\Gamma\) for which the boundary \(\Gamma\) has co-dimension greater than one, is stable under Carleson perturbations of the operator. More specifically, for \(n\ge 3\) and \(1\le d < n-1\), it is assumed that \(\Gamma \subset \mathbb{R}^n\) is a closed set such that the \(d\)-dimensional Hausdorff measure of its intersection with ball centered at any \(x\in \Gamma\) and radius \(r>0\) is bounded above and below by positive constants (independent of \(x\)) times \(r^d\). A set \(\Gamma\) with this property is called \(d\)-Ahlfors-David-regular. On \(\Omega:=\mathbb{R}^n\setminus\Gamma\) consider \[ (Lu)(X) = -\mbox{div} \left( \frac{\mathcal{A}(X)}{\mbox{dist}(X,\Gamma)^{n-d-1}}\nabla u(X)\right), \] where \(\mathcal{A}\) is a uniformly elliptic matrix. The Dirichlet problem for \(L\) with \(L^p\) data is solvable, or \((D)_p\) is solvable, if for each \(f \in L^p(\Gamma,\sigma)\), there exists a unique solution \(u\) to the problem \(Lu=0\) in \(\Omega\), \(u\to f\) non-tangentially, and \(Nu\) is dominated in \(L^p(\Gamma,\sigma)\) by \(f\), (here \(N\) is the non-tangential maximal function). In Theorem~1.2 are described perturbations of the matrix \(\mathcal{A}\) (not necessarily symmetric) so that if the initial \((D)_{p'}\) is solvable for some \(p'\in (0,\infty)\), then the perturbed \((D)_{q'}\) is solvable for some (possibly different) \(q'\in (0,\infty)\). In Theorem~1.5, under certain conditions on the ``smallness'' of the allowed perturbations, the same result holds with \(q'=p'\).