Min-max formulas for nonlocal elliptic operators

TL;DR

This paper characterizes a broad class of nonlocal elliptic operators on Riemannian manifolds as min-max combinations of linear drift-diffusion and integro-differential operators, extending classical results to nonlinear and nonlocal settings.

Contribution

It provides a nonlinear, nonlocal extension of Courrège's classical characterization, showing such operators can be expressed as min-max over linear operators, and links nonlinear elliptic equations to differential games.

Findings

Operators can be represented as min-max of linear operators

Extension of Courrège's characterization to nonlinear, nonlocal operators

Connection of nonlinear elliptic equations to differential games

Abstract

In this work, we give a characterization of Lipschitz operators on spaces of $C^2(M)$ functions (also $C^{1,1}$, $C^{1,\gamma}$, $C^1$, $C^\gamma$) that obey the global comparison property-- i.e. those that preserve the global ordering of input functions at any points where their graphs may touch, often called "elliptic" operators. Here $M$ is a complete Riemannian manifold. In particular, we show that all such operators can be written as a min-max over linear operators that are a combination of drift-diffusion and integro-differential parts. In the \emph{linear} (and nonlocal) case, Courr\`ege had characterized these operators in the 1960's, and in the \emph{local, but nonlinear} case-- e.g. local Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman operators-- this characterization has also been known for quite some time. Our result gives both a nonlinear extension of Courr\`ege's and a nonlocal extension of well known results for local Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equations. It also shows any nonlinear scalar elliptic equation can be represented as an Isaacs equation for an appropriate differential game. Our approach is to "project" the operator to a finite dimensional space, where a min-max formula is easier, and then the min-max can be appropriately lifted to the original operator on the infinite dimensional space. As one application, we mention some preliminary results about the structure of Dirichlet-to-Neumann mappings for second order elliptic equations, including fully nonlinear equations. This is the Director's cut, and it contains extra details for our own sanity.