Quantitative uniqueness estimates for second order elliptic equations with unbounded drift

TL;DR

This paper establishes quantitative decay estimates at infinity for solutions to second order elliptic equations with unbounded drift in the plane, extending understanding of unique continuation properties.

Contribution

It provides explicit asymptotic bounds for solutions with unbounded drift, linking decay rates to the integrability of the drift term, which is a novel quantitative analysis.

Findings

Solutions decay at a rate depending on the integrability of the drift

Established bounds are exponential for p>2 and polynomial for p=2

Results connect maximal vanishing order with strong unique continuation

Abstract

In this paper we derive quantitative uniqueness estimates at infinity for solutions to an elliptic equation with unbounded drift in the plane. More precisely, let $u$ be a real solution to $\Delta u+W\cdot\nabla u=0$ in ${\mathbf R}^2$, where $W$ is real vector and $\|W\|_{L^p({\mathbf R}^2)}\le K$ for $2\le p<\infty$. Assume that $\|u\|_{L^{\infty}({\mathbf R}^2)}\le C_0$ and satisfies certain a priori assumption at $0$. Then $u$ satisfies the following asymptotic estimates at $R\gg 1$ \[ \inf_{|z_0|=R}\sup_{|z-z_0|<1}|u(z)|\ge \exp(-C_1R^{1-2/p}\log R)\quad\text{if}\quad 2<p<\infty \] and \[ \inf_{|z_0|=R}\sup_{|z-z_0|<1}|u(z)|\ge R^{-C_2}\quad\text{if}\quad p=2, \] where $C_1>0$ depends on $p, K, C_0$, while $C_2>0$ depends on $K, C_0$ . Using the scaling argument in [BK05], these quantitative estimates are easy consequences of estimates of the maximal vanishing order for solutions of the local problem. The estimate of the maximal vanishing order is a quantitative form of the strong unique continuation property.