Regularized distance and its applications (Q791036)

An important tool for studying boundary behavior of solutions of second order elliptic equations in a domain \(\Omega\) is the comparison principle, and a simple means of obtaining comparison functions for \(C^ 2\) domains is to construct them as functions of the distance function \(d(x)=dist(x,\partial \Omega)\) because in this case d is \(C^ 2\) near (and up to) \(\partial \Omega\). However, for less smooth domains, d is generally not even \(C^ 1\). As these less smooth domains are still of interest, it is useful to have some analog of d which is \(C^ 2\) near (although not necessarily up to) \(\partial \Omega\) and which is equivalent to d. One such analog, called a regularized distance \(\rho\), is constructed and shown to have other desirable properties as well. Examples of these properties are: (1) if \(\Omega\) is Lipschitz, then \(| \text{grad} \rho |\) is bounded away from zero near \(\partial \Omega\), (2) if \(\Omega\) is convex, then \(\rho\) is concave, (3) the global regularity of \(\rho\) is exactly the same as that of \(\Omega\), (4) the Hessian, \(D^ 2\rho\), of \(\rho\) becomes infinite no faster than at a rate determined only by the regularity of \(\Omega\) (e.g., if \(\partial \Omega \ni C^{1,\alpha}\) for some \(\alpha\in(0,1]\), then \(| D^ 2\rho | \leq C(\Omega)d^{\alpha -1}).\) (Except for (4), all of these properties are enjoyed by d if \(\partial \Omega \in C^ 2.)\) Also, some applications of the regularized distance are given, and a version of regularized distance for parabolic equations is discussed.