Univalent solutions of elliptic systems of Heinz-Lewy type (Q912282)

The author is concerned with the behavior of homeomorphisms \(u=(u^ 1,u^ 2)\) of a domain \(\Omega \subset {\mathbb{R}}^ 2\) which are solutions to a second order, elliptic quasilinear system of the form \[ - D_{\alpha}(a^{\alpha \beta}(x,u)D_{\beta}u^ k)=f^ k(x,u,Du),\quad k=1,2, \] where the right hand side may have quadratic growth with respect to Du. In the first paragraph the regularity of weak solutions of class \(H^ 1_ 2\cap L_{\infty}(\Omega)\) is investigated. It is shown that if the matrix \(a^{\alpha \beta}\) is uniformly elliptic and Hölder continuous with respect to its variables than any one-to-one weak solution of the above system has Hölder continuous first derivatives and the corresponding Hölder norm can be estimated in terms of the \(L_{\infty}\)-norm of u and the \(L_ 2\)-norm of Du. In the second paragraph the behavior of real-valued solutions \(\phi\) of a linear differential inequality \[ | D_{\alpha}(a^{\alpha \beta}(x)D_{\beta}\phi)| \leq C(| \phi | +| D\phi |) \] at a zero of \(\phi\) is studied and it is shown that if \(\phi (0)=0\) but \(\phi\) \(\not\equiv 0\) then for some integer m the limit \(\lim_{z\to 0}z^{-m}\phi_ z(z)\) exists and is non-zero, where \(z=x_ 1+ix_ 2\) and \(\phi_ z=(1/2)(\phi_{x_ 1}-i\phi_{x_ 2})\). Here the coefficients are again assumed to be Hölder continuous but do not depend on \(\phi\). This result is applied in the third paragraph to demonstrate the non-vanishing of the Jacobian of one-to-one mappings u satisfying a system of the form \[ - (1/a(u))D_{\alpha}(a(u)D_{\alpha}u^ k)=c^{\alpha \beta} h^ k_{i_ j}(u) D_{\alpha}u^ i D_{\beta}u^ j, \] where a and \(h^ k_{ij}\) are bounded and Hölder continuous, a positive, and \(c^{11}=c^{22}\), \(c^{12}=-c^{21}\). A corresponding uniform estimate for the Jacobian from below can also be obtained under suitable normalizations. The results of this paper generalize earlier work of E. Heinz and H. Lewy.