Boundary regularity for the Monge-Ampère and affine maximal surface equations (Q2389103)

The authors prove global second derivative estimates for solutions of the Dirichlet problem for the Monge-Ampère equation when the inhomogeneous term is only assumed to be Hölder continuous. Consider the solutions of the Monge-Ampère equation \[ \det D^2 u = f \] in a domain \(\Omega\) in \({\mathbb R}^n\) with boundary condition \(u = \varphi\) on \(\partial \Omega\). Let \(\Omega\) be a uniformly convex domain with \(C^3\) boundary \(\partial \Omega\) and assume that \(\varphi \in C^3(\bar \Omega)\) and \(f \in C^\alpha(\bar \Omega)\) for some \(\alpha \in (0,1)\) satisfying \(\inf f >0\). Then the authors prove that any convex solution \(u\) of the Dirichlet problem mentioned above satisfies a priori estimate \[ \| u\|_{C^{2,\alpha}(\bar\Omega)} \leq C, \] where \(C\) is a positive constant depending only on \(n, \alpha, \inf f, \| f\|_{C^\alpha(\bar\Omega)}, \partial \Omega\) and \(\varphi\). As an application of the main result, the authors derive global second derivative estimates for the second boundary value problem for the affine maximal surface equation. The affine maximal surface equation can be written in the form \[ L[u] = U^{ij}D_{ij}w = f\quad \text{in } \Omega,\tag{1} \] where \((U^{ij})\) is the cofactor matrix of the Hessian matrix \(D^2 u\) of the convex function and \[ w = [\det D^2 u]^{- \frac{n+1}{n+2}}.\tag{2} \] The second boundary value problem for (1) is the Dirichlet problem for the system (1), (2), that is, to prescribe \[ u = \varphi, \quad w = \psi \quad \text{on } \partial \Omega.\tag{3} \] In this situation, the authors show that if \(\Omega\) is a uniformly convex domain in \({\mathbb R}^n\) with \(\partial \Omega \in C^{3, 1}, \varphi \in C^{3,1}(\bar\Omega), \psi \in C^{3,1}(\bar\Omega), \inf_\Omega \psi >0\) and \(f \leq 0, f \in L^\infty(\Omega)\), then there is a unique uniformly convex solution \(u \in W^{4,p}(\Omega)\) for all \(1 < p < \infty\) to the boundary value problem (1)--(3). If furthermore \(f \in C^\alpha(\bar\Omega), \varphi \in C^{4,\alpha}(\bar\Omega), \psi \in C^{4,\alpha}(\bar\Omega)\) and \(\partial \Omega \in C^{4, \alpha}\) for some \(\alpha \in (0,1)\), then the solution \(u \in C^{4,\alpha}(\bar\Omega)\).