Schauder estimates for degenerate Monge-Ampère equations and smoothness of the eigenfunctions (Q504142)

The authors develop Schauder estimates up to the boundary for certain degenerate real Monge-Ampère equations on bounded convex domains. Let \(\Omega\subset \{x_n>0\}\) be a bounded convex domain in the upper-half space such that \(\partial \Omega\) is \(C^{1,1}\) at the origin. Consider the Monge-Ampère equation \[ \det(D^2 u)=g(x) \mathrm{dist}^\alpha_{\partial \Omega}, \] where \(\mathrm{dist}_{\partial \Omega}\) represents the distance to the boundary of the domain, \(\alpha>0\) is a positive constant, \(g\) is a nonnegative function continuous at the origin with \(g(0)>0\). The first result is a \(C^{2,\beta}\) estimate of the solution \(u\) at \(0\), for \(0<\beta<\frac{2}{2+\alpha}\). The second result is is a \(C^{2,\beta}\) regularity result in a neighborhood of the origin under similar assumptions. A consequence of these technical results is the following important global theorem. Theorem. Assume that \(\Omega\) is a bounded and uniformly convex in \(\mathbb{R}^n\), with \(C^{2,\beta}\) boundary such that \(0<\beta<\frac{2}{2+n}\). Assume that \(u\) is a solution of \[ (\det(D^2 u))^{1/n}=\lambda | u| \] with vanishing \(u\) on the boundary. Then \(u\) has \(C^{2,\beta}\) regularity on \(\bar{\Omega}\). Futhermore if \(\Omega\) actually has a smooth boundary, then \(u\) is smooth on the whole \(\bar{\Omega}\). This solves the question of global higher derivative estimates up to the boundary, see \textit{N. S. Trudinger} and \textit{X.-J. Wang}'s survey [in: Handbook of geometric analysis. No. 1. Somerville, MA: International Press; Beijing: Higher Education Press. 467--524 (2008; Zbl 1156.35033)].