Lecture Notes in Mathematics 1977

Editors:
J.-M. Morel, Cachan
F. Takens, Groningen
B. Teissier, Paris
C.I.M.E. means Centro Internazionale Matematico Estivo, that is, International Mathematical Summer
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C.I.M.E. Director C.I.M.E. Secretary

Pietro ZECCA Elvira MASCOLO
Dipartimento di Energetica “S. Stecco” Dipartimento di Matematica
Università di Firenze Università di Firenze
Via S. Marta, 3 viale G.B. Morgagni 67/A
50139 Florence 50134 Florence
Italy Italy
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CIME activity is carried out with the collaboration and financial support of:

– INdAM (Istituto Nationale di Alta Mathematica)

Matthew J. Gursky · Ermanno Lanconelli
Andrea Malchiodi · Gabriella Tarantello
Xu-Jia Wang · Paul C. Yang

Geometric Analysis
and PDEs

Lectures given at the

C.I.M.E. Summer School
held in Cetraro, Italy
June 11–16, 2007

Editors:
Antonio Ambrosetti
Sun-Yung Alice Chang
Andrea Malchiodi

123
Editors
Alice Chang Andrea Malchiodi
Princeton University SISSA
Fine Hall Via Beirut 2-4
Washington Road 34014 Trieste
Princeton, NJ 08544-1000 Italy
USA [email protected]
[email protected]

Antonio Ambrosetti
SISSA
Via Beirut 2-4
34014 Trieste
Italy
[email protected]

Authors: see List of Contributors

ISSN 0075-8434 e-ISSN: 1617-9692

ISBN: 978-3-642-01673-8 e-ISBN: 978-3-642-01674-5
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-01674-5
Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York
Library of Congress Control Number: 2009926187

Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 35J60, 35A30, 35J20, 35H20, 53C17, 35Q40

c Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009

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Preface

This volume contains the notes of the lectures delivered at the CIME course
Geometric Analysis and PDEs during the week of June 11–16 2007 in Cetraro
(Cosenza). The school consisted in six courses held by M. Gursky (PDEs in
Conformal Geometry), E. Lanconelli (Heat kernels in sub-Riemannian set-
tings), A. Malchiodi (Concentration of solutions for some singularly perturbed
Neumann problems), G. Tarantello (On some elliptic problems in the study of
selfdual Chern-Simons vortices), X.J. Wang (The k-Hessian Equation) and
P. Yang (Minimal Surfaces in CR Geometry).
Geometric PDEs are a field of research which is currently very active, as
it makes it possible to treat classical problems in geometry and has had a
dramatic impact on the comprehension of three- and four-dimensional mani-
folds in the last several years. On one hand the geometric structure of these
PDEs might cause general difficulties due to the presence of some invariance
(translations, dilations, choice of gauge, etc.), which results in a lack of com-
pactness of the functional embeddings for the spaces of functions associated
with the problems. On the other hand, a geometric intuition or result might
contribute enormously to the search for natural quantities to keep track of,
and to prove regularity or a priori estimates on solutions. This two-fold aspect
of the study makes it both challenging and complex, and requires the use of
several refined techniques to overcome the major difficulties encountered. The
applications of this subject are many while for the CIME course we had to
select only a few, trying however to cover some of the most relevant ones,
with interest ranging from the pure side (analysis/geometry) to the more
applied one (physics/biology). Here is a brief summary of the topics covered
in the courses of this school.
M. Gursky treated a class of elliptic equations from conformal geometry:
the general aim is to deform conformally (through a dilation which depends
on the point) the metric of a given manifold so that the new one possesses
special properties. Classical examples are the uniformization problem of two-
dimensional surfaces and the Yamabe problem in dimension greater or equal
to three, where one requires the Gauss or the scalar curvature to become

v
vi Preface

constant. After recalling some basic facts on these problems, which can be
reduced to semilinear elliptic PDEs, Gursky turned to their fully nonlin-
ear counterparts. These concern the prescription of the symmetric forms in
the eigenvalues of the Schouten tensor (a combination of the Ricci tensor
and the scalar curvature), and turn out to be elliptic under suitable con-
ditions on their domain of definition (admissible functions). The solvability
of these equations has concrete applications in geometry, since for exam-
ple they might guarantee pinching conditions on the Ricci tensor, together
with its geometric/topological consequences. After recalling some regularity
estimates by Guan and Wang, existence was shown using blow-up analy-
sis techniques. Finally, the functional determinant of conformally invariant
operators in dimension four was discussed: the latter turns out to have a uni-
versal decomposition into three terms which respectively involve the scalar
curvature, the Q-curvature and the Weyl tensor. Some conditions on the
coefficients of these three terms guarantee coercivity of the functional, and in
these cases existence of extremal metrics was obtained using a minimization
technique.
E. Lanconelli covered some topics on existence and sharp estimates on
heat kernels of subelliptic operators. Typically, in a domain or a manifold
Ω of dimension n, k vector fields X1 , . . . , Xk are given (with 2 ≤ k < n)
which satisfy the Hörmander condition, namely their Lie brackets span all
of the tangent spaces to Ω. One considers then linear operators L (or their
k
parabolic counterpart) whose principal part is given by i=1 Xi2 . During the
lectures, existence and regularity (Hörmander) theory for such operators was
recalled, and in particular the role of the Carnot-Caratheodory distance, mea-
sured through curves whose velocities belong to the linear span of the Xi ’s.
This distance is not homogeneous (at small scales), and it is very useful to
describe the degeneracy of the operators in the above form. One of the main
motivations for this study is the problem of prescribing the Levi curvature
of boundaries of domains in Cn , which for graphs amounts to solving a fully
nonlinear degenerate equation, whose linearization is of the form previously
described. Gaussian bounds for heat kernels were then given, first for constant
coefficient operators modeled on Carnot groups, and then for general oper-
ators using the method of the parametrix. Finally, applications to Harnack
type inequalities were derived in terms of the heat kernel bounds.
The course by A. Malchiodi on singularly perturbed Neumann problems
dealt with elliptic nonlinear equations where a small parameter (the singular
perturbation) is present in front of the principal term (the Laplacian). The
study is motivated by considering a class of reaction-diffusion systems (in par-
ticular the Gierer-Meinhardt model) and the (focusing) nonlinear Schrödinger
equation. First a finite-dimensional reduction technique, which incorporates
the variational structure of the problem, was presented: by means of this
method, existence of solutions concentrating at points of the boundary of
the domain was studied. Here the geometry of the boundary is significant,
as concentration occurs at critical points of the mean curvature. After this,
Preface vii

existence of solutions concentrating at the whole boundary was proved: the

phenomenon here is rather different, since the latter family has a diverg-
ing Morse index when the singular perturbation parameter tends to zero.
Initially, accurate approximate solutions were constructed (depending on the
second fundamental form of the domain), and then the invertibility of the lin-
earized equation was shown (primarily using Fourier analysis), which made
it possible to prove existence using local inversion arguments.
G. Tarantello’s course focused on self-dual vortices in Chern-Simons the-
ory. The physical phenomenon of superconductivity is described by a system
of coupled gauge-field equations whose components stand for the wave func-
tion and the electromagnetic potential. A relatively well understood model
is the abelian-Higgs (corresponding in a non-relativistic context to the
Ginzburg-Landau) variant, for which much has been accomplished even away
from the self-dual regime. A more sophisticated alternative is the Chern-
Simons model, which compared to the previous one has the advantage of
predicting the fact that gauge vortices carry electrical charge in addition to
magnetic flux, although its mathematical description is at the moment less
complete. After describing the main features of these models, Tarantello pre-
sented the approach of Taubes to the selfdual regime for the abelian-Higgs
case, which reduces the system to a semilinear elliptic problem with expo-
nential nonlinearities. This method partially extends to the Chern-Simons
case, where some natural requirements on solutions can be proved, like their
asymptotic behavior at infinity, integrability properties and the decay of their
derivatives. The structure of C-S vortices is however more rich (and, as we
remarked, far from being completely characterized) in comparison to the
abelian-Higgs ones: in addition to the topological solutions, which have a well
defined winding number at infinity, there are also non-topological solutions,
which display different asymptotic behavior.
X.J. Wang treated k-Hessian equations, a class of fully nonlinear equations
related to the problem of prescribing the Gauss curvature of a hypersur-
face, and to the Monge-Ampére equation, which is of interest in complex
geometry. First the class of admissible functions was defined, where the equa-
tions are elliptic, and then existence for Dirichlet boundary value problems
was obtained by means of a priori estimates and a continuation argument.
Next, interior gradient estimates were derived, which imply Harnack inequal-
ities, plus Sobolev-type inequalities for admissible functions which vanish on
the boundary of the domain: the embedding which follows from the latter
inequality possesses compactness properties analogous to the classical ones,
and makes it possible to derive L∞ estimates for solutions of equations with
sufficiently integrable right-hand sides. These estimates make it possible to
treat equations with nonlinear (subcritical or critical) reaction terms, where
min-max methods can be applied. After this, the notion of k-admissibility
was extended to non smooth functions using the concept of hessian measure,
and applied to the existence of weak solutions and to potential-theoretical
results. Finally, parabolic equations and several examples were treated.
viii Preface

The course by P. Yang concerned minimal surfaces in three-dimensional

CR manifolds, which possess a subriemannian structure modeled on the
Heisenberg group H1 . In this setting the volume form of M is naturally
defined in terms of the contact form θ as θ ∧ dθ: the p-area and the p-mean
curvature (p standing for pseudo) of a two-dimensional surface were defined
looking at the first and second variation of the volume form. p-minimal (regu-
lar) graphs in H1 were then considered, showing that they are ruled surfaces.
A study of the singular set (where the tangent plane to the surface coin-
cides with the contact plane, the kernel of θ) was then performed, and it was
shown that it consists either of isolated points or of smooth curves: applica-
tions were given to the classification of entire p-minimal graphs. Existence of
weak solutions (minimizers) to boundary value problems (of Plateau type)
was considered, showing the uniqueness, comparison principles and geometric
properties of the solutions. The regularity issue was then discussed, which is
a rather delicate one since the global C 2 regularity of minimizers might fail
in general.
Some of the students who attended the school were also supported by
SISSA, GNAMPA and by MiUR under the PRIN 2006 Variational methods
and nonlinear differential equations.
Finally, we would like to express our warm gratitude to the CIME Foun-
dation, to the CIME Director Prof. P. Zecca, to the CIME Board Secretary
Prof. E. Mascolo and to the CIME staff for their invaluable help and support,
and for making the environment in Cetraro so stimulating and enjoyable.

Alice S.Y. Chang

Antonio Ambrosetti
Andrea Malchiodi
List of Contributors

Matthew J. Gursky
Department of Mathematics, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame,
IN 46556, USA, [email protected]
Ermanno Lanconelli
Dipartimento di Matematica, Universita’ degli Studi di Bologna, P.zza di
Porta S. Donato, 5 40127 - Bologna, Italy, [email protected]
Andrea Malchiodi
SISSA, Sector of Mathematical Analysis, Via Beirut 2-4, 34014 Trieste,
Italy, [email protected]
Gabriella Tarantello
Universita’ di Roma Tor Vergata-Dipartimento di Matematica, via della
ricerca scientifica, 00133 Rome, Italy, [email protected]
Xu-Jia Wang
Mathematical Sciences Institute, Australian National University, Canberra,
ACT 0200, Australia, [email protected]
Paul Yang
Department of Mathematics, Princeton University, Fine Hall, Washington
Road, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA, [email protected]

ix
Contents

PDEs in Conformal Geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Matthew J. Gursky
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2 Some Background from Riemannian Geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.1 Some Differential Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3 Some Background from Elliptic Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4 Background from Conformal Geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5 A Fully Nonlinear Yamabe Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
5.1 Ellipticity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.2 From Lower to Higher Order Estimates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.3 An Existence Result: Four Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
6 The Functional Determinant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
6.1 The Case of Surfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
6.2 Four Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
6.3 The Euler Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
6.4 Existence of Extremals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
6.5 Sketch of the Proof . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Heat Kernels in Sub-Riemannian Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Ermanno Lanconelli
1 Lecture Topics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2 A Motivation: Levi Curvatures and Motion by Levi Curvatures . . . . 38
3 Heat Kernels and Gaussian Bounds: Past History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
4 Carnot-Carathèodory metric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
5 Heat-Type Operators with Constant Coefficients . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
6 Heat-Type Operators with Variable Coefficients.
The Levi Parametrix Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
7 Hadamard-Pini Invariant Harnack Inequality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

xi
xii Contents

Concentration of Solutions for Some

Singularly Perturbed Neumann Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Andrea Malchiodi
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Part I Concentration at Points

2 Perturbation in Critical Point Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

2.1 The Finite-Dimensional Reduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
2.2 Existence of Critical Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
3 Application to the Study of P̃ε . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
 
3.1 Study of Ker[I (U )] and Ker[I + (U )] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
3.2 Proof of Theorem 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
3.3 Proof of Theorem 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Part II Higher-Dimensional Concentration

4 Some Preliminary Facts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

5 An Approximate Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
6 Eigenvalues of the Linearized Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
7 Proof of Theorem 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

On Some Elliptic Problems in the

Study of Selfdual Chern-Simons Vortices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Gabriella Tarantello
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
2 The Abelian-Higgs Model and The Chern-Simons-Higgs Model . . . . 119
3 Selfduality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
4 On the Elliptic Problem Concerning Abelian-Higgs Vortices . . . . . . . 132
5 On the Elliptic Problem of Selfdual Chern-Simons Vortices . . . . . . . 145
5.1 Topological Chern-Simons Voritces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
5.2 Non Topological Chern-Simons Vortices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

The k-Hessian Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

Xu-Jia Wang
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
2 Admissible Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
2.1 Admissible Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
2.2 Admissible Solution is Elliptic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
2.3 Concavity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
2.4 A Geometric Assumption on the Boundary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
2.5 Some Algebraic Inequalities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Contents xiii

3 The Dirichlet Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184

3.1 A priori Estimates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
3.2 Regularity for Fully Nonlinear, Uniformly Elliptic Equation . . . 188
3.3 Existence of Smooth Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
3.4 Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
4 Interior a Priori Estimates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
4.1 Interior Gradient Estimate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
4.2 Harnack Inequality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
4.3 Interior Second Derivative Estimate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
5 Sobolev Type Inequalities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
5.1 Sobolev Type Inequalities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
5.2 Compactness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
5.3 An L∞ Estimate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
6 Variational Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
6.1 The Sublinear Growth Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
6.2 The Eigenvalue Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
6.3 Superlinear Growth Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
6.4 The Critical Growth Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
7 Hessian Integral Estimates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
7.1 A Basic Estimate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
7.2 Local Integral Gradient Estimates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
8 Hessian Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
8.1 Non-Smooth k-Admissible Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
8.2 Perron Lifting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
8.3 Weak Continuity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
8.4 The Dirichlet Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
9 Local Behavior of Admissible Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
9.1 The Wolff Potential Estimate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
9.2 Hölder Continuity of Weak Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
10 Parabolic Hessian Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
11 Examples of Fully Nonlinear Elliptic Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250

Minimal Surfaces in CR Geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

Paul Yang
1 Pseudo-Hermitian Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
2 Area of a Surface in (M 3 , θ, J) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
3 Structure of the Singular Set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
4 Some Applications of Theorem A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
5 Weak Solutions and Condition for Minimizer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
6 Existence and Uniqueness for Boundary Value Problems . . . . . . . . . . 268
7 Regularity of the Regular Part . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273