Elliptic Differential Equations

Derived from a lecture series for college mathematics students, introduces the methods of dealing with elliptical boundary-value problems--both the theory and the numerical analysis. Includes exercises. Translated and somewhat expanded from the 1987 German version. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This volume is based on PDE courses given by the authors at the Courant Institute and at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. Presented are basic methods for obtaining various a priori estimates for second-order equations of elliptic type with particular emphasis on maximal principles, Harnack inequalities, and their applications. The equations considered in the book are linear; however, the presented methods also apply to nonlinear problems.

This volume is intended as an essentially self contained exposition of portions of the theory of second order quasilinear elliptic partial differential equations, with emphasis on the Dirichlet problem in bounded domains. It grew out of lecture notes for graduate courses by the authors at Stanford University, the final material extending well beyond the scope of these courses. By including preparatory chapters on topics such as potential theory and functional analysis, we have attempted to make the work accessible to a broad spectrum of readers. Above all, we hope the readers of this book will gain an appreciation of the multitude of ingenious barehanded techniques that have been developed in the study of elliptic equations and have become part of the repertoire of analysis. Many individuals have assisted us during the evolution of this work over the past several years. In particular, we are grateful for the valuable discussions with L. M. Simon and his contributions in Sections 15.4 to 15.8; for the helpful comments and corrections of J. M. Cross, A. S. Geue, J. Nash, P. Trudinger and B. Turkington; for the contributions of G. Williams in Section 10.5 and of A. S. Geue in Section 10.6; and for the impeccably typed manuscript which resulted from the dedicated efforts oflsolde Field at Stanford and Anna Zalucki at Canberra. The research of the authors connected with this volume was supported in part by the National Science Foundation.

The book originates from the Elliptic PDE course given by the first author at the Scuola Normale Superiore in recent years. It covers the most classical aspects of the theory of Elliptic Partial Differential Equations and Calculus of Variations, including also more recent developments on partial regularity for systems and the theory of viscosity solutions.

Elliptic partial differential equations is one of the main and most active areas in mathematics. This book is devoted to the study of linear and nonlinear elliptic problems in divergence form, with the aim of providing classical results, as well as more recent developments about distributional solutions. For this reason this monograph is addressed to master's students, PhD students and anyone who wants to begin research in this mathematical field.

In the theory of partial differential equations, the study of elliptic equations occupies a preeminent position, both because of the importance which it assumes for various questions in mathematical physics, and because of the completeness of the results obtained up to the present time. In spite of this, even in the more classical treatises on analysis the theory of elliptic equations has been considered and illustrated only from particular points of view, while the only expositions of the whole theory, the extremely valuable ones by LICHTENSTEIN and AscoLI, have the charac ter of encyclopedia articles and date back to many years ago. Consequently it seemed to me that it would be of some interest to try to give an up-to-date picture of the present state of research in this area in a monograph which, without attaining the dimensions of a treatise, would nevertheless be sufficiently extensive to allow the expo sition, in some cases in summary form, of the various techniques used in the study of these equations.

The primary objective of this monograph is to give a comprehensive exposition of results surrounding the work of the authors concerning boundary regularity of weak solutions of second order elliptic quasilinear equations in divergence form. The book also contains a complete development of regularity of solutions of variational inequalities, including the double obstacle problem, where the obstacles are allowed to be discontinuous. The book concludes with a chapter devoted to the existence theory thus providing the reader with a complete treatment of the subject ranging from regularity of weak solutions to the existence of weak solutions.

In the few years since their appearance in the mid-sixties, variational inequalities have developed to such an extent and so thoroughly that they may now be considered an "institutional" development of the theory of differential equations (with appreciable feedback as will be shown). This book was written in the light of these considerations both in regard to the choice of topics and to their treatment. In short, roughly speaking my intention was to write a book on second-order elliptic operators, with the first half of the book, as might be expected, dedicated to function spaces and to linear theory whereas the second, nonlinear half would deal with variational inequalities and non variational obstacle problems, rather than, for example, with quasilinear or fully nonlinear equations (with a few exceptions to which I shall return later). This approach has led me to omit any mention of "physical" motivations in the wide sense of the term, in spite of their historical and continuing importance in the development of variational inequalities. I here addressed myself to a potential reader more or less aware of the significant role of variational inequalities in numerous fields of applied mathematics who could use an analytic presentation of the fundamental theory, which would be as general and self-contained as possible.