Some remarks on singular solutions of nonlinear elliptic equations. I (Q2431366)

The authors study strong maximum principles for singular solutions of nonlinear elliptic and degenerate elliptic equations of second order. Let \(F \in C^1(\Omega \times {\mathbb R}\times {\mathbb R}^n \times {\mathcal S}^{n\times n})\) satisfy an elliptic condition \((-\frac{\partial F}{\partial M_{ij}}(x, s, p, M)) >0\) for a bounded domain \(\Omega \subset {\mathbb R}^n\) containing the origin, where \({\mathcal S}^{n\times n}\) denotes the set of \(n\times n\) real symmetric matrices. Assume that \(u \in C^2(\Omega \setminus \{0\})\) satisfies the following property for some \(\bar r >0\): For any \(V \in {\mathbb R}^n\), \(w(x) = u(x) + V\cdot x\) satisfies the minimum principle \(\inf_{B_r\setminus \{0\}} w = \min_{\partial B_r} w\) for all \(0 < r < \bar r\). Under these assumptions, the authors prove that if \(v \in C^2(\Omega)\) satisfies \( u > v\) on \(\Omega \setminus \{0\}\) and \(F(x, u, \nabla u, \nabla^2 u) \geq F(x, v, \nabla v, \nabla^2 v)\) in \(\Omega \setminus \{0\}\), then \(\liminf_{|x|\to 0} (u-v)(x) >0\). If the assumption \(u >v\) in \(\Omega \setminus \{0\}\) is replaced by \(u \geq v\), then, in view of the strong maximum principle, either \(u = v\) in \(\Omega \setminus \{0\}\) or the inequality mentioned above holds. The authors also show that the same results still hold if we allow the singular set to be a closed submanifold of dimension \(k \leq n-2\). As an application of the main result, the authors establish some results on symmetry of positivity solutions in a punctured ball using the method of moving planes.