The maximum principle of Alexandrov for very weak solutions (Q2436994)

The authors are concerned with maximum principles for second order elliptic operators in the form \(Lu=\text{Tr}[A(x)D^2 u]\) where \(A(x)\) is a \(n\times n\) elliptic matrix. The authors extend some result related to the maximum principle in the spirit of Alexandrov to classes of weaker regular functions. One of such classes is the Orlicz-Sobolev space \(W^{2,\Theta}(\Omega)\) of functions \(u\) whose second derivatives satisfy \[ \int_{\Omega}\frac{|D^2 u|^n}{\log^{1/n}(e+|D^2 u|)}<\infty. \] The authors prove that if \(u\in W^{2,\Theta}(\Omega)\cap C(\overline\Omega)\) is concave then \[ \sup_{\Omega} u\leq \sup_{\partial\Omega} u^++C\|Lu/(det A(x))^{1/n}\|_{L^n(\Omega)}, \] where \(C\) is a positive constant depending only on \(n\) and diameter of \(\Omega\). Similar results are then established for uniformly elliptic operators \(L\) and continuous functions \(u\) that belong to the Grand-Sobolev space \(W^{2,n)}(\Omega)\).