Pointwise estimates for Laplace equation. Applications to the free boundary of the obstacle problem with Dini coefficients (Q731266)

In this long paper, the author proves some pointwise regularity properties of solutions of the Laplace equation or of obstacle problems involving the Laplace operator. In the first case, the author considers the elliptic problem \(\Delta u=f\) in the unit ball \(B_{1}\) of \(\mathbb{R}^{n}\), where \(f\) belongs to \(L^{p}(B_{1})\), \(p\in (0,+\infty )\), and satisfies \(f(0)=0\), assuming that \(0\) is a Lebesgue point of \(f\). The author introduces a pointwise modulus of mean oscillation for \(f\) in the ball \(B_{r}\) centered at \(0\) and of radius \(r\) as \(\widetilde{\sigma }_{p}(\rho )=\sup_{r\in (0,\rho ]}\inf_{c\in \mathbb{R}}(\int_{B_{R}}|f(x)-c|^{p}/|B_{r}|)^{1/p}\). He then defines the Dini and double Dini regularity properties of \( \widetilde{\sigma }_{p}\). For the main result concerning the Laplace problem, the author defines the quantity \(\widetilde{M}(u,\rho )=\sup_{r\in (0,\rho ]}\inf_{P\in \widetilde{\mathcal{P}}_{2}}( \int_{B_{R}}|u-P|^{p}/r^{n+2p})^{1/p}\), where \(\widetilde{\mathcal{P}}_{2}\) denotes the space of polynomials of degree less than or equal to 2. The author proves a pointwise BMO estimate for \(\widetilde{M}(u,1)\) in terms of \( \left\| u\right\| _{L^{p}(B_{1})}\), of \(\left\| f\right\| _{L^{p}(B_{1})}\) and of \(\widetilde{\sigma }_{p}(1)\). He also proves a pointwise VMO estimate for \(\widetilde{M}(u,r)\) when \(r\rightarrow 0^{+}\). He finally proves that if \(\widetilde{\sigma}_{p}\) is Dini regular then \( \widetilde{M}(u,.)\) is Dini regular too. In the second example, the author considers the obstacle problem \(\Delta u=f1_{\{u>0\}}\), \(u\geq 0\), in \(B_{1}\), assuming \(f(0)=1\) and \(0\in \partial \{u>0\}\). Here the author defines the pointwise modulus of continuity \(\sigma _{p}(\rho )=\sup_{r\in (0,\rho]}(\int_{B_{R}}|f(x)-f(0)|^{p}/|B_{r}|)^{1/p}\). The main result for this second example is established assuming that \(p\geq 2n/(n+1)\). The author defines \(\phi (r)=\int_{B_{R}}(|\nabla u|^{2}/2+u)/r^{n+2}-\int_{\partial B_{R}}u^{2}/r^{n+3}\). If \(\sigma _{p}\) is Dini regular then \(\phi \) has a limit \(\phi (0^{+})\) at \(r=0\) and \(0\) may be a degenerate point, or a regular point, or even a singular point, according to the value of \(\phi (0^{+})\) equal to \(0\), \(\alpha \) or \(2\alpha \), for some constant \(\alpha (n)>0\). The proof of these results is mainly based on estimates obtained for the quantity \((\int_{B_{R}}|(u(x)-P_{0}(x))/r^{2}|^{p}/|B_{r}|)^{1/p}\) for appropriate choices of \(P_{0}\) polynomial of degree less than or equal to 2 in the first case, or belonging to the set \(\mathcal{P}_{reg}=\{P,\exists \nu \in S^{n-1},P(x)=\max (0,x\cdot \nu )^{2}/2\}\), in the second example. The author also uses blow-up arguments and Liouville theorems. In the last part of his paper, the author applies the results to an obstacle problem for a more general elliptic problem \(\sum_{ij}a_{ij}(x)u_{ij}+ \sum_{i}b_{i}(x)u_{i}+c(x)u=f(x)1_{\{u>0\}}\), \(u\geq 0\) in an open subset \( \Omega \) of \(\mathbb{R}^{n}\). The coefficients \(a_{ij}\), \(b_{i}\) and \(c\) and \(f\) are supposed to be continuous and Dini regular. In an appendix, the author proves \(C^{2,\alpha }\) estimates in the \(L^{p}\) norm for the solution of a fully nonlinear equation \(F(D^{2}u)=0\) assuming that \(F\in C^{2}\) and that it is uniformly elliptic.