Geometric gradient estimates for solutions to degenerate elliptic equations (Q2349159)

Some geometric gradient estimates for viscosity solutions to a class of degenerate nonlinear elliptic equations are obtained in this paper. Here degenerate means actually that solutions \(u\) degenerate on an a priori unknown set of critical points where \(\nabla u=0\). The authors obtain sharp interior regularity estimates for these solutions and then provide several interesting applications to: i) superconductitvity equations; ii) the \(\infty\)-Laplacian, something related with a famous counterexample by Aronsson; iii) the \(p\)-Laplacian with \(p\geq 2\). In some cases the regularity given by the theorems, Hölder continuity of \(\nabla u\) for some \(0<b<1\), can be precised: if the equations degenerate in the gradient as the power \(0<\beta<1\), with \(\beta>0\), under some concavity assumption, then \(b= \beta/\beta+1\). The results are claimed to be new even for the simple case \(|\nabla u|^\beta\Delta u=1\), with \(\beta>0\).