Sharp three sphere inequality for perturbations of a product of two second order elliptic operators and stability for the Cauchy problem for the anisotropic plate equation (Q639528)

This paper proves a sharp three sphere inequality for solutions to third-order perturbations of a product of two second-order elliptic operators with real coefficients. Various kinds of quantitative estimates of unique continuation for the anisotropic plate equation are derived. Among these, a stability estimate for the Cauchy problem for such an equation is proved. The paper illustrates some applications to the estimation of the size of an unknown inclusion made of a different material that might be present in the plate. The paper is self-contained and the Carleman estimate, from which the sharp three sphere inequality is derived, is proved in an elementary and direct way based on standard integration by parts.