Continuity of infinitely degenerate weak solutions via the trace method
Abstract
In 1971 Fediĭ proved the remarkable theorem that the linear second order
partial differential operator in the plane with coefficients 1 and f^2 is
hypoelliptic provided that f is smooth, vanishes at the origin and is positive
otherwise. Variants of this result, with hypoellipticity replaced by continuity
of weak solutions, were recently given by the authors, together with Cristian
Rios and Ruipeng Shen, to infinitely degenerate elliptic divergence form
equations where the nonnegative matrix A(x,u) has bounded measurable
coefficients with trace roughly 1 and determinant comparable to f, and where
F=ln(1/f) is essentially doubling. However, in the plane, these variants
assumed additional geometric constraints on f, something not required in
Fediĭ's theorem. In this paper we in particular remove these additional
geometric constraints in the plane for homogeneous equations with F essentially
doubling.