On Linear Degenerate Elliptic PDE Systems with Constant Coefficients

TL;DR

This paper investigates the existence and regularity of solutions to a class of degenerate elliptic PDE systems with constant coefficients, extending previous work by relaxing the strict convexity assumption.

Contribution

It introduces an adapted distribution extension method to establish existence, partial regularity, and uniqueness for solutions of degenerate elliptic systems without strict rank-one convexity.

Findings

Proves existence of solutions in a degenerate elliptic setting

Establishes partial regularity results for solutions

Addresses boundary condition issues with low regularity solutions

Abstract

Let $\textbf{A}$ be a symmetric convex quadratic form on $\mathbb{R}^{Nn}$ and $\Omega\Subset \mathbb{R}^n$ a bounded convex domain. We consider the problem of existence of solutions $u: \Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^n \longrightarrow \mathbb{R}^N$ to the problem \[ \tag{1} \label{1} \begin{split} \sum_{\beta=1}^N\sum_{i,j=1}^n \textbf{A}_{\alpha i \beta j}\, D^2_{ij}u_\beta \,=\, f_\alpha, \text{ in }\Omega,\quad \ u\,=\, 0, \text{ on }\partial \Omega, \end{split} \] when $ f\in L^2(\Omega,\mathbb{R}^N)$. \eqref{1} is degenerate elliptic and it has not been considered before without the assumption of strict rank-one convexity. In general, it may not have even distributional solutions. By introducing an extension of distributions adapted to \eqref{1}, we prove existence, partial regularity and by imposing an extra condition uniqueness as well. The satisfaction of the boundary condition is also an issue due to the low regularity of the solution. The motivation to study \eqref{1} and the method of the proof arose from recent work of the author [K4, arXiv:1501.06164] on generalised solutions for fully nonlinear systems.