Regularity results for quasilinear degenerate elliptic obstacle problems in Carnot groups (Q2313574)

Summary: Let \(\{X_1 ,\ldots ,X_m \}\) be a basis of the space of horizontal vector fields on the Carnot group \(\mathbb{G}=(\mathbb{R}^N, \circ)\) (\(m N\)). We establish regularity results for solutions to the following quasilinear degenerate elliptic obstacle problem \begin{align*} \int\limits_\Omega\! {\langle \langle AXu,Xu\rangle ^{\frac{p-2}{2}}AXu,X(v-u)\rangle } dx\\ \quad\geq\int\limits_\Omega\! {B(x,u,Xu)(v-u)}dx +\int\limits_\Omega \!{\langle f(x),X(v-u)\rangle } dx,\quad \text{for all } v\in \mathcal{K}_\psi^\theta (\Omega), \end{align*} where \(A=(a_{ij}(x))_{m\times m} \) is a symmetric positive-definite matrix with measurable coefficients, \(p\) is close to 2, \[\mathcal{K}_\psi ^\theta(\Omega )=\big\{v\in HW^{1,p}(\Omega): v\geq \psi \text{ a.e. in }\Omega ,v-\theta\in HW_0^{1,p} (\Omega )\big\},\] \(\psi\) is a given obstacle function, \(\theta\) is a boundary value function with \(\theta \geq \psi \). We first prove the \(C_X^{0,\alpha}\) regularity of solutions provided that the coefficients of \(A\) are of vanishing mean oscillation (VMO). Then the \(C_X^{1,\alpha }\) regularity of solutions is obtained if the coefficients belong to the class \(\mbox{BMO}_\omega\) which is a proper subset of VMO.