New maximum principles for fully nonlinear ODEs of second order (Q951287)

\textit{Y. Y. Li} and \textit{L. Nirenberg} [J. Eur. Math. Soc. (JEMS) 8, No. 2, 317--339 (2006; Zbl 1113.53003)] have proved that some \(C^2\) curves in the plane are symmetric about certain lines. In the proof of their result they used a new version of the boundary point lemma and raised the question of whether this version, which involves a curvature operator \((k(u'))'\), might be extended to more general operators \(K(u,u',u'')\). In this paper, the authors give a positive answer, and in fact they do so under weaker conditions. Let \(K\colon {\mathbb R}^{3}\rightarrow {\mathbb R}\) be in \(C^{0}(\mathbb{R}^{3})\), and let \((q,r)\mapsto K(p,q,r)\) be \(C^1\) for each \(p\). Suppose that: \[ \frac{\partial K(p,q,r)}{\partial r}>0,\quad \forall (p,q,r)\in \mathbb{R}^{3}. \] The main result of the paper reads: Given \(K\) as above, let \(u,v\in C^{2}[a,b]\) satisfy \[ K(u(t),u'(t),u''(t))\leq K(v(s),v'(s),v''(s)) \] whenever \(u(t)=v(s)\) for some \(t,s\in (a,b)\) and let \((i)\) \(u(a)=v(a)\), \(u'(a)=v'(a)\), \((ii)\) either \(u'>0\), \(v'\geq 0\), \(v(x)>v(a)\), or \(u'\geq 0\), \(v'>0\), \(u(x)>u(a),\) in \((a,b)\). Then \(u\leq v\) on \([a,b]\). Some examples show that condition \((ii)\) is optimal. In addition, new strong and weak maximum principles are given for nonlinear second-order differential equations and, as a by-product, a simpler proof is obtained for the theorem of Li and Nirenberg concerning the aforementioned symmetry properties of curves.