A class of fully nonlinear equations (Q2308076)

The authors establish a priori estimates for solutions of a class of boundary value problem for the fully nonlinear equation \begin{align*} u_{tt}\left( \Delta u -b\left\lvert \nabla u \right\rvert^{2} + a \left( x \right) \right) - \left\lvert \nabla u_{t}\right\rvert^{2} = f \text{ in } M \times \left(0, 1 \right), \end{align*} with the prescribed boundary conditions \begin{align*} u = u_{0} \text{ on } M \times \left\lbrace t=0 \right\rbrace \quad \text{ and } \quad u = u_{1} \text{ on } M \times \left\lbrace t=1 \right\rbrace, \end{align*} where \(M\) is a compact Riemannian manifold, \(b \geq 0\) is a constant, \(a:M \rightarrow \mathbb{R}\) is a positive smooth function and \(f \in C^{2}\left( M \times [0,1]\right)\) is a positive function. Using these a priori estimates, the authors employ the continuity method to show the existence of \(u \in C^{3,\beta}\left( M \times [0,1]\right)\) for any \(\beta \in [0, 1),\) solving the BVP. The estimates are a consequence of concavity of the equation, which closely parallels the Donaldson equation for a Weil-Peterson metric on the space of volume forms. The main motivation for studying this class of equations is an unified treatment of the Donaldson equation and some of the Gursky-Streets equations.