Weighted integrability of polyharmonic functions

Abstract

To address the uniqueness issues associated with the Dirichlet problem for the $N$-harmonic equation on the unit disk $\D$ in the plane, we investigate the $L^p$ integrability of $N$-harmonic functions with respect to the standard weights $(1-|z|^2)^α$. The question at hand is the following. If $u$ solves $Δ^N u=0$ in $\D$, where $Δ$ stands for the Laplacian, and [\int_\D|u(z)|^p (1-|z|^2)^α\diff A(z)<+\infty,] must then $u(z)\equiv0$? Here, $N$ is a positive integer, $α$ is real, and $0 β(N,p)$ there exist non-trivial functions $u$ with $Δ^N u=0$ of the given integrability, while for $α\leβ(N,p)$, only $u(z)\equiv0$ is possible. We also investigate the obstruction to uniqueness for the Dirichlet problem, that is, we study the structure of the functions in $\mathrm{PH}^p_{N,α}(\D)$ when this space is nontrivial. We find a fascinating structural decomposition of the polyharmonic functions -- the cellular (Almansi) expansion -- which decomposes the polyharmonic weighted $L^p$ in a canonical fashion. Corresponding to the cellular expansion is a tiling of part of the $(p,α)$ plane into cells. A particularly interesting collection of cells form the entangled region.