Dirichlet and Neumann boundary values of solutions to higher order elliptic equations (Q2326255)

The paper under review studies boundary values of weak solutions to linear elliptic equations of order \(2m\geq 2\). More precisely, given an elliptic differential operator of the form \[ Lu:=(-1)^m \sum_{|\alpha|=|\beta|=m} \partial^\alpha \big(A_{\alpha\beta}\partial^\beta u\big),\quad m\geq 1, \] with generally bounded and measurable coefficients, the authors consider the Dirichlet problem \[ Lu=0\quad \text{in}\ \Omega,\qquad \nabla^{m-1}u=\dot{\mathbf{f}}\quad \text{on}\ \partial\Omega, \] for a domain \(\Omega\) and array \(\dot{\mathbf{f}}\) of boundary functions, as well as the corresponding higher order Neumann problem with boundary data \(\dot{\mathbf{g}}\). In the specific case when \(\Omega\) is the upper half-space \(\mathbb{R}^{n+1}_+=\big\{(x,t)\colon\ x\in \mathbb{R}^n,\ t>0\big\}\) and the coefficients \(A_{\alpha\beta}\) are independent of \(t\), assuming that certain norm of \(u\) is finite, the authors show that the Dirichlet and Neumann boundary values of \(u\) do exist. Moreover, norms of \(u\) are found that force \(\dot{\mathbf{f}}\) and \(\dot{\mathbf{g}}\) to lie in the Lebesgue spaces \(L^p(\partial\mathbb{R}^{n+1}_+)\) or in the Sobolev spaces \({\dot{W}}^p_{\pm 1}(\partial\mathbb{R}^{n+1}_+)\). In the case when \(u\) is a solution to a \textit{second} order equation, the results obtained are new for certain values of \(p\).