Solution to the Khavinson problem near the boundary of the unit ball

Abstract: This paper deals with an extremal problem for harmonic functions in the unit ball of

m a t h b f R^{n}

. We are concerned with the pointwise sharp estimates for the gradient of real--valued bounded harmonic functions. Our main result may be formulated as follows. The sharp constants in the estimates for the absolute value of the radial derivative and the modulus of the gradient of a bounded harmonic function coincide near the boundary of the unit ball. This result partially confirms a conjecture posed by D. Khavinson.

Review text

The paper deals with pointwise sharp estimates for the gradient of real-valued bounded harmonic functions. More precisely, let \(n>2\) and let \(\mathbb{B}_n\) denote the unit ball in \(\mathbb{R}^n\). For every point \(x\) in \(\mathbb{B}_n\) and for every \(l \in \partial \mathbb{B}_n\), let \(\mathcal{C}(x)\) denote the optimal number for the gradient estimate \[ |\nabla U(x)| \leq \mathcal{C}(x)\sup_{y} |U(y)| \] and let \(\mathcal{C}(x;l)\) denote the optimal number for the gradient estimate in direction \(l\), i.e., the smallest number such that \[ |\langle\nabla U(x), l\rangle| \leq \mathcal{C}(x; l)\sup_{y} |U(y)|\, . \] Here \(U\) is a bounded harmonic function in \(\mathbb{B}_n\). The author shows that \[ \mathcal{C}(x)=\mathcal{C}(x; \mathrm n_x)\, , \] when \(x\) is close to \(\partial \mathbb{B}_n\), where \(\mathrm n_x\) denotes the normal direction at the point \(x\). This result partially confirms a conjecture by \textit{D. Khavinson} [Can. Math. Bull. 35, No. 2, 218--220 (1992; Zbl 0776.31004)].

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