Interior \(W^{2, \delta}\) type estimates for degenerate fully nonlinear elliptic equations with \(L^n\) data (Q6979243)

The authors obtain interior \(W^{2,\delta}\) estimates for a class of degenerate fully nonlinear elliptic equations with \(L^n\) right-hand side. The equations in particular extends the \(p\)-Laplace equation. A central novelty of the work lies in the introduction of a method that employs vertical sliding of \(C^{1,\alpha}\) cones -- rather than the classical use of paraboloids -- to make contact with the solution. By quantifying the contact set in terms of the measure of the corresponding vertex set, they show that the solution admits tangent \(C^{1,\alpha}\) cones at almost every point. This geometric insight leads directly to the desired second-order regularity estimates. The approach offers a nonlinear analogue of known techniques used in the divergence-form quasilinear elliptic setting, as studied in \N[\textit{B. Avelin} et al., Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal. 227, No. 2, 663--714 (2018; Zbl 1390.35078); \N\textit{A. Cianchi} and \textit{V. G. Maz'ya}, Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal. 229, No. 2, 569--599 (2018; Zbl 1398.35078)].