Abstract:
The purpose of this dissertation is to study the strong minimum/maximum
principle and to investigate various Liouville-type theorems for partial trace equa
tions with nonlinear gradient terms. To investigate the problems and obtain the
results presented in this dissertation, we will use various principles (minimum
and maximum principles, a comparison principle for viscosity sub/supersolutions,
boundary principles, and compact support principles), concepts of duality, and
different mathematical estimates and inequalities.
In this study, we examine a strong minimum principle of Vázquez type for
partial trace operators with gradient terms. More explicitly, given a n-tuple a =
(a1, · · · ,an) of non-negative real numbers with an > 0, we give sufficient conditions
on a continuous function h: R × R+
0 → R in order for non-negative viscosity
supersolutions of
Pa(D2u) = h(u,|Du|)
(⋆)
in connected open subsets of Rn that vanish at some point to Ω vanish identically
in Ω. When h depends only on the gradient, the condition is also necessary.
Here Pa belongs to a class of fully nonlinear degenerate elliptic operators that
includes the Min-Max operator which is defined as the sum of the minimum and
the maximum eigenvalues of the Hessian matrix. Under suitable conditions on
h and a = (a1,··· ,an), both the Strong Maximum Principle and the Compact
Support Principle for subsolutions are also investigated. The work covers a new
class of degenerate operators and a wide class of Hamiltonians not investigated
in the literature and some of the results are new even when Pa reduces to the
standard Laplacian. Illustrative examples are presented for such equations.
We investigate various Liouville-type theorems for partial trace equations with
nonlinear gradient terms. Specifically, we establish sufficient conditions for whic