Local Gagliardo-Nirenberg estimates for elliptic systems of vector fields (Q2391557)

The starting point of this paper is the following global \(L^1\)-estimate for \(k\)-forms due to Bourgain, Brezis, Lanzani and Stein: \[ \|u\|_{L^\frac{N}{N-1}}\leq C(\|du\|_{L^1}+\|d^*u\|_{L^1}),\quad u\in C_c^\infty(\mathbb{R}^N; \Lambda^k\mathbb{R}^N).\tag{1} \] Here \(d\) denotes the exterior differential and \(d^*\) its dual operator. For \(k=0\), the above inequality gives back the well-known Sobolev-Gagliardo-Nirenberg inequality: \[ \|u\|_{L^\frac{N}{N-1}}\leq C(\|\nabla u\|_{L^1}),\quad u\in C_c^\infty(\mathbb{R}^N). \] Let \(\Omega\) be an open set in \(\mathbb{R}^N\), and let \(L_1,...,L_n\) (\(n\geq 2\)) be an elliptic system of linearly independent vector fields with smooth complex coefficients defined on \(\Omega\). The authors prove the following local version of the Sobolev-Gagliardo-Nirenberg inequality for the system \(L_1,...,L_n\): for every \(x_0\in\Omega\) there exist an open neighborhood \(U\subset \Omega\) and \(C>0\) such that \[ \|u\|_{L^\frac{N}{N-1}}\leq C\sum_{j=1}^n\|L_ju\|_{L^1},\quad u\in C_c^\infty(U). \] If the system \(\mathcal{L}=\{L_1,...,L_n\}\) is elliptic and involutive, there is a natural differential complex \(d_{\mathcal{L}}\) associated to \(\mathcal{L}\) which is the de Rham complex when \(L_j=\partial_{x_j}\). The second main result of this paper is a local version of the Bourgain, Brezis, Lanzani and Stein's \(L^1\) estimate for the differential complex \(d_{\mathcal{L}}\).