Higher differentiability for \(n\)-harmonic systems with Sobolev coefficients (Q496719)

The author is concerned with regularity of solutions \(u\in W^{1,1}_{\mathrm{loc}}(\Omega,\mathbb{R}^N)\) of \(\text{div} A(x,Du)=0\) in a bounded open set \(\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^n\), \(N\geq 1\), \(n>2\). Here \(A=A(x,\xi):\Omega\times \mathbb{R}^{N\times n}\to \mathbb{R}^{N\times n}\) is a degenerate elliptic operator that satisfies the following structural conditions: \[ A(x,0)=0, \] \[ \langle A(x,\xi)-A(x,\eta),\xi-\eta\rangle\geq \frac{1}{K(x)}|\xi-\eta|^2 (|\xi|^2+|\eta|^2)^{(n-2)/2} \] \[ |A(x,\xi)-A(x,\eta)|\leq K(x) |\xi-\eta| (|\xi|^2+|\eta|^2)^{(n-2)/2}, \] and \[ |A(x,\xi)-A(x,\eta)|\leq (|DK(x)|+|DK(y)|) |x-y| (1+|\xi|^{n-1}), \] for a.e. \(x,y\in \Omega\) and \(\xi, \eta\in \mathbb{R}^{N\times n}\). Under the above assumptions the author proves that if \(u\in W^{1,1}_{\mathrm{loc}}(\Omega,\mathbb{R}^N)\) is a finite energy solution then \[ \frac{1}{K^{1/2}}|Du|^{(n-2)/2} Du\in W^{1,2}_{\mathrm{loc}}(\Omega). \] Some Caccioppoli type inequalities are also derived.