\(C^{1, 1}\) estimates for elliptic equations with partial and piecewise continuous coefficients (Q693676)

The author considers the following second order elliptic differential operator \[ Lu := \sum _{i,j=1}^n a_{ij}(x) D_{ij} u , \quad a_{ij}(x)=a_{ji}(x) \] where \(x=(x_1,\ldots ,x_n)\in \Omega \), \(\Omega \) is a bounded domain in \({\mathbb R}^n\) with \(C^2\) boundary \(\partial \Omega \), and \(\{a_{ij }\}\) is a Lebesgue measurable matrix-valued function on \(\Omega \), which satisfies the uniformly elliptic condition \[ \lambda | \xi | ^2 \leq \sum _{i,j=1}^n a_{ij}(x) \xi _i \xi _j \leq \Lambda | \xi | ^2 \quad \text{for any }\xi \in {\mathbb R}^n \tag{1.1} \] with \(0<\lambda \leq \Lambda < \infty \). The fundamental question in the theory of elliptic equations is when the Dirichlet problem \[ Lu=f \,\, \mathrm{in} \,\, \Omega ,\quad u=\varphi \,\, \mathrm{on}\,\, \partial \Omega \leqno{(1.2)} \] is uniquely solvable. For \(\alpha \in (0,1]\), the partial Hölder semi-norm of the function \(u\) with respect to the partial variable \(x'=(x_1, \ldots , x_{n-1})\) is defined as \[ [u]_{C^{\alpha }_{x'}(\Omega )}= \sup _{t_*< x_n < t^*} \sup _{(x',x_n), (y',x_n) \in \Omega , x'\neq y'} \frac{| u(x',x_n)-u(y',x_n)| }{| x' -y'| }, \] where \(t^*= \sup \{t; \{x_n=t\} \cap \Omega \neq \emptyset \}\) and \(t_*=\inf \{t; \{x_n=t\} \cap \Omega \neq \emptyset \}\). A function \(u\in L^{\infty }(\Omega )\) is said to belong to \(C^{\alpha }_{x'}(\Omega )\) if \([u]_{C^{\alpha }_{x'}(\Omega )}<\infty \). For \(f\in L^p_{\mathrm{loc}}(\Omega ), p>n/2\), a function \(u\) is an \(L^p\) viscosity subsolution (supersolution) of \(Lu=f\) in \(\Omega \) if for any \(\phi \in W^{2,p}_{\mathrm{loc}}(\Omega ) \) touching \(u\) from above (below) at the point \(\hat{x}\) locally one has \[ \begin{aligned} & \text{ ess} \limsup _{x \to \hat{x}} (a_{ij}x) D_{ij}\phi (x) -f(x) \geq 0,\\ & (\text{ess} \liminf _{x \to \hat{x}} (a_{ij}x) D_{ij}\phi (x) -f(x) \leq 0).\end{aligned} \] And, a function \(u\) is said a \(L^p\) viscosity solution of \(Lu=f\) if \(u\) is both an \(L^p\) viscosity subsolution and supersolution. Then the author gets the following theorems. Theorem. Suppose that \(a_{ij }\in C_{x',L^n}(\Omega )\) satisfies (1.1) and \(f\in L^p(\Omega )\) for some \(p>n\). Then for every boundary value \(\varphi \in C(\partial \Omega )\), there exists a unique \(L^p\) viscosity solution \(u\in W^{2,p}_{\mathrm{loc}}(\Omega )\cap C(\overline{\Omega })\) of the Dirichlet problem (1.2). Moreover, for any \(\Omega ' \Subset \Omega \), \[ \| u \| _{W^{2,p} (\Omega ')}\leq C\{ \| \varphi \| _{L^{\infty }(\partial \Omega )}+ \| f \| _{L^p(\Omega )}\}, \] where \(C\) a positive constant.