Advanced Search

The estimate ${∥D^{k-1}u∥}_{L^{n/(n-1)}}\le {∥A\left(D\right)u∥}_{L^1}$ is shown to hold if and only if $A\left(D\right)$ is elliptic and canceling. Here $A\left(D\right)$ is a homogeneous linear differential operator $A\left(D\right)$ of order $k$ on ${ℝ}^n$ from a vector space $V$ to a vector space $E$. The operator $A\left(D\right)$ is defined to be canceling if ${\bigcap }_{\xi \in {ℝ}^n\setminus \left\{0\right\}}A\left(\xi \right)\left[V\right]=\left\{0\right\}$. This result implies in particular the classical Gagliardo–Nirenberg–Sobolev inequality, the Korn–Sobolev inequality and Hodge–Sobolev estimates for differential forms due to J. Bourgain and H. Brezis. In the proof, the class of cocanceling homogeneous linear differential...

We study symmetry properties of least energy positive or nodal solutions of semilinear elliptic problems with Dirichlet or Neumann boundary conditions. The proof is based on symmetrizations in the spirit of Bartsch, Weth and Willem (J. Anal. Math., 2005) together with a strong maximum principle for quasi-continuous functions of Ancona and an intermediate value property for such functions.

Given a compact manifold $N^n\subset {ℝ}^{\nu }$ and real numbers $s\ge 1$ and $1\le p\<\infty$, we prove that the class $C^{\infty }({\overline{Q}}^m;N^n)$ of smooth maps on the cube with values into $N^n$ is strongly dense in the fractional Sobolev space $W^{s,p}(Q^m;N^n)$ when $N^n$ is $\lfloor sp\rfloor$ simply connected. For $sp$ integer, we prove weak sequential density of $C^{\infty }({\overline{Q}}^m;N^n)$ when $N^n$ is $sp-1$ simply connected. The proofs are based on the existence of a retraction of ${ℝ}^{\nu }$ onto $N^n$ except for a small subset of $N^n$ and on a pointwise estimate of fractional derivatives of composition of maps in $W^{s,p}\cap W^{1,sp}$.

Given a compact manifold $N^n$, an integer $k\in {\mathbb{N}}_{*}$ and an exponent $1\le p<\infty$, we prove that the class $C^{\infty }({\overline{Q}}^m;N^n)$ of smooth maps on the cube with values into $N^n$ is dense with respect to the strong topology in the Sobolev space $W^{k,p}(Q^m;N^n)$ when the homotopy group ${\pi }_{\lfloor kp\rfloor }\left(N^n\right)$ of order $\lfloor kp\rfloor$ is trivial. We also prove density of maps that are smooth except for a set of dimension $m-\lfloor kp\rfloor -1$, without any restriction on the homotopy group of $N^n$.