Propagation of maxima and strong maximum principle for viscosity solutions of degenerate elliptic equations. I: Convex operators (Q5940172)

The classical strong maximum principle for uniformly elliptic operator states that nonnegative maxima of solutions propagate to all of \(\Omega\), so that the maximum is attained everywhere in \(\Omega\). For degenerate elliptic operators the set \(\text{Prop}(x)\), to which a maximum at \(x\) propagates is not necessarily all of \(\Omega\). The authors characterize such points of maxima for viscosity solutions of fully nonlinear degenerate elliptic equations \(F(x,u(x), Du(x),D^2 u(x))= 0\) which are convex in the \(u\), \(Du\), \(D^2 u\) variables, so that \(F\) can be presented as a supremum of a family of linear operators \(L_\alpha\) with \(L_\alpha u= -\text{Trace}(a^\alpha(x) D^2u)+ b^\alpha(x)\cdot Du+ c^\alpha(x) u\). The characterization of \(\text{prop}(x)\) is then given in terms of fields generated from the coefficients \(a^\alpha\), \(b^\alpha\), \(c^\alpha\).