arXiv subjects

Steve Hofmann

Publications and source records attributed to Steve Hofmann.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

A Characterization of Solvability of the Parabolic $L^p$ Dirichlet Problem on Lipschitz Graph Domains Via Carleson Measure Estimates of Bounded Solutions

In this paper, we show that if the bounded solutions to the parabolic Dirichlet problem on a Lipshitz-$\left[1,\frac{1}{2}\right]$ domain obey a Carleson measure estimate, then the corresponding parabolic measure on the boundary will belong to class $A^\infty$, which is equivalent to $L^p$ solvability for some $p<\infty$. This improves the existing literature which places additional assumptions on the parabolic uniform rectifiability or, equivalently, on the half-order time derivative of the function whose graph defines the boundary of the domain.

math.AP↗

arXiv2025

A Variable Coefficient Free Boundary Problem for $L^p$-solvability of Parabolic Dirichlet Problems in Graph Domains

We investigate variable coefficient analogs of a recent work of Bortz, Hofmann, Martell and Nystr\"om [BHMN25]. In particular, we show that if $\Omega$ is the region above the graph of a Lip(1,1/2) (parabolic Lipschitz) function and $L$ is a parabolic operator in divergence form \[L = \partial_t - \text{div} A \nabla\] with $A$ satisfying an $L^1$ Carleson condition on its spatial and time derivatives, then the $L^p$-solvability of the Dirichlet problem for $L$ and $L^*$ implies that the graph function has a half-order time derivative in BMO. Equivalently, the graph is parabolic uniformly rectifiable. In the case of $A$ symmetric, we only require that the Dirichlet problem for $L$ is solvable, which requires us to adapt a clever integration by parts argument by Lewis and Nystr\"om. A feature of the present work is that we must overcome the lack of translation invariance in our equation, which is a fundamental tool in similar works, including [BHMN25].

math.AP↗

arXiv2025

The Dirichlet Problem for elliptic equations with singular drift terms

We establish $L^p$ solvability of the Dirichlet problem, for some finite $p$, in a 1-sided chord-arc domain $\Omega$ (i.e., a uniform domain with Ahlfors-David regular boundary), for elliptic equations of the form \[ Lu=-\text{div}(A\nabla u) + {\bf B}\cdot \nabla u=:L_0 u+ {\bf B}\cdot \nabla u=0, \] given that the analogous result holds (typically with a different value of $p$) for the homogeneous second order operator $L_0$. Essentially, we assume that $|{\bf B}(X)|\lesssim \text{dist}(X,\partial \Omega)^{-1}$, and that $|{\bf B}(X)|^2\text{dist}(X,\partial \Omega) dX$ is a Carleson measure in $\Omega$.

math.AP↗

arXiv2023

On the Kato problem for elliptic operators in non-divergence form

We consider the Kato square root problem for non-divergence second order elliptic operators $L =- a_{ij} D_iD_j$, and, especially, the normalized adjoints of such operators. In particular, our results are applicable to the case of real coefficients having sufficiently small BMO norm. We assume that the coefficients of the operator are smooth, but our estimates do not depend on the assumption of smoothness.

math.AP↗

arXiv2023

Critical Perturbations for Second Order Elliptic Operators. Part II: Non-tangential maximal function estimates

This is the final part of a series of papers where we study perturbations of divergence form second order elliptic operators $-\operatorname{div} A \nabla$ by first and zero order terms, whose complex coefficients lie in critical spaces, via the method of layer potentials. In particular, we show that the $L^2$ well-posedness (with natural non-tangential maximal function estimates) of the Dirichlet, Neumann and regularity problems for complex Hermitian, block form, or constant-coefficient divergence form elliptic operators in the upper half-space are all stable under such perturbations. Due to the lack of the classical De Giorgi-Nash-Moser theory in our setting, our method to prove the non-tangential maximal function estimates relies on a completely new argument: We obtain a certain weak-$L^p$ ''$N<S$'' estimate, which we eventually couple with square function bounds, weighted extrapolation theory, and a bootstrapping argument to recover the full $L^2$ bound. Finally, we show the existence and uniqueness of solutions in a relatively broad class. As a corollary, we claim the first results in an unbounded domain concerning the $L^p$-solvability of boundary value problems for the magnetic Schr\"odinger operator $-(\nabla-i{\bf a})^2+V$ when the magnetic potential ${\bf a}$ and the electric potential $V$ are accordingly small in the norm of a scale-invariant Lebesgue space.

math.AP↗

arXiv2022

Regularity and Neumann problems for operators with real coefficients satisfying Carleson condition

In this paper, we continue the study of a class of second order elliptic operators of the form $\mathcal L=\mbox{div}(A\nabla\cdot)$ in a domain above a Lipschitz graph in $\mathbb R^n,$ where the coefficients of the matrix $A$ satisfy a Carleson measure condition, expressed as a condition on the oscillation on Whitney balls. For this class of operators, it is known (since 2001) that the $L^q$ Dirichlet problem is solvable for some $1 < q < \infty$. Moreover, further studies completely resolved the range of $L^q$ solvability of the Dirichlet, Regularity, Neumann problems in Lipschitz domains, when the Carleson measure norm of the oscillation is sufficiently small. We show that there exists $p_{reg}>1$ such that for all $1 1$ is the number such that the $L^q$ Dirichlet problem for the adjoint operator $\mathcal L^*$ is solvable for all $q>q_*$. Additionally when $n=2$, there exists $p_{neum}>1$ such that for all $1 1$ is the number such that the $L^q$ Dirichlet problem for the operator $\mathcal L_1=\mbox{div}(A_1\nabla\cdot)$ with matrix $A_1=A/\det{A}$ is solvable for all $q>q^*$.

math.AP↗

arXiv2021

Corona Decompositions for Parabolic Uniformly Rectifiable Sets

We prove that parabolic uniformly rectifiable sets admit (bilateral) corona decompositions with respect to regular Lip(1,1/2) graphs. Together with our previous work, this allows us to conclude that if $\Sigma\subset\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ is parabolic Ahlfors-David regular, then the following statements are equivalent. (1) $\Sigma$ is parabolic uniformly rectifiable. (2) $\Sigma$ admits a corona decomposition with respect to regular Lip(1,1/2) graphs. (3) $\Sigma$ admits a bilateral corona decomposition with respect to regular Lip(1,1/2) graphs. (4) $\Sigma$ is big pieces squared of regular Lip(1,1/2) graphs.

math.MG↗

arXiv2021

Parabolic Singular Integrals with Nonhomogeneous Kernels

We establish $L^2$ boundedness of all "nice" parabolic singular integrals on "Good Parabolic Graphs", aka {\em regular} Lip(1,1/2) graphs. The novelty here is that we include non-homogeneous kernels, which are relevant to the theory of parabolic uniform rectifiability. Previously, the third named author had treated the case of homogeneous kernels. The present proof combines the methods of that work (which in turn was based on methods described in Christ's CBMS lecture notes), with the techniques of Coifman-David-Meyer.

math.CA↗

arXiv2021

Carleson measure estimates for caloric functions and parabolic uniformly rectifiable sets

Let $E \subset \mathbb R^{n+1}$ be a parabolic uniformly rectifiable set. We prove that every bounded solution $u$ to $$\partial_tu- \Delta u=0, \quad \text{in} \quad \mathbb R^{n+1}\setminus E$$ satisfies a Carleson measure estimate condition. An important technical novelty of our work is that we develop a corona domain approximation scheme for $E$ in terms of regular Lip(1/2,1) graph domains. This approximation scheme has an analogous elliptic version which is an improvement of the known results in that setting.

math.AP↗

arXiv2021

Perturbation of elliptic operators in 1-sided NTA domains satisfying the capacity density condition

Let $Ω\subset\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$, $n\ge 2$, be a 1-sided non-tangentially accessible domain (aka uniform domain), i.e., a set which satisfies the interior Corkscrew and Harnack chain conditions, respectively scale-invariant/quantitative versions of openness and path-connectedness. Assume that $Ω$ satisfies the so-called capacity density condition. Let $L_0u=-\mathrm{div}(A_0\nabla u)$, $Lu=-\mathrm{div}(A\nabla u)$ be two real (non-necessarily symmetric) uniformly elliptic operators, and write $ω_{L_0}$, $ω_L$ for the associated elliptic measures. The goal of this program is to find sufficient conditions guaranteeing that $ω_L$ satisfies an $A_\infty$-condition or a $RH_q$-condition with respect to $ω_{L_0}$. We show that if the discrepancy of the two matrices satisfies a natural Carleson measure condition with respect to $ω_{L_0}$, then $ω_L\in A_\infty(ω_{L_0})$. Moreover, $ω_L\in RH_q(ω_{L_0})$ for any given $1<q<\infty$ if the Carleson measure condition is assumed to hold with a sufficiently small constant. This extends previous work of Fefferman-Kenig-Pipher and Milakis-Pipher-Toro who considered Lipschitz and chord-arc domains. Here we go beyond as the capacity density condition is much weaker than the existence of exterior Corkscrew balls. The "large constant" case, where the discrepancy satisfies a Carleson measure condition, is new even for nice domains such as the unit ball, the upper half-space, or Lipschitz domains, and is obtained using the method of extrapolation of Carleson measure. Our domains do not have a nice surface measure: all the analysis is done with the underlying measure $ω_{L_0}$. When particularized to Lipschitz, chord-arc, or 1-sided chord-arc domains, we recover previous results and extend some of them. Our arguments rely on the square function and non-tangential estimates proved in arXiv:2103.10046.

math.CA↗

arXiv2021

Square function and non-tangential maximal function estimates for elliptic operators in 1-sided NTA domains satisfying the capacity density condition

Let $Ω\subset\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$, $n\ge 2$, be a 1-sided non-tangentially accessible domain (aka uniform domain), that is, $Ω$ satisfies the interior Corkscrew and Harnack chain conditions, which are respectively scale-invariant/quantitative versions of openness and path-connectedness. Let us assume also that $Ω$ satisfies the so-called capacity density condition, a quantitative version of the fact that all boundary points are Wiener regular. Consider $L_0 u=-\mathrm{div}(A_0\nabla u)$, $Lu=-\mathrm{div}(A\nabla u)$, two real (non-necessarily symmetric) uniformly elliptic operators in $Ω$, and write $ω_{L_0}$, $ω_L$ for the respective associated elliptic measures. The goal of this program is to find sufficient conditions guaranteeing that $ω_L$ satisfies an $A_\infty$-condition or a $RH_q$-condition with respect to $ω_{L_0}$. In this paper we are interested in obtaining square function and non-tangential estimates for solutions of operators as before. We establish that bounded weak null-solutions satisfy Carleson measure estimates, with respect to the associated elliptic measure. We also show that for every weak null-solution, the associated square function can be controlled by the non-tangential maximal function in any Lebesgue space with respect to the associated elliptic measure. These results extend previous work of Dahlberg-Jerison-Kenig and are fundamental for the proof of the perturbation results in arXiv:1901.08261.

math.CA↗

arXiv2021

$L^2$ estimates for commutators of the Dirichlet-to-Neumann Map associated to elliptic operators with complex-valued bounded measurable coefficients on $\mathbb{R}^{n+1}_+$

In this paper we establish commmutator estimates for the Dirichlet-to-Neumann Map associated to a divergence form elliptic operator in the upper half-space $\mathbb{R}^{n+1}_+:=\{(x,t)\in \mathbb{R}^n \times (0,\infty)\}$, with uniformly complex elliptic, $L^{\infty}$, $t$-independent coefficients. By a standard pull-back mechanism, these results extend corresponding results of Kenig, Lin and Shen for the Laplacian in a Lipschitz domain, which have application to the theory of homogenization.

math.AP↗

arXiv2021

On Big Pieces approximations of parabolic hypersurfaces

Let $Σ$ be a closed subset of $\mathbb{R}^ {n+1}$ which is parabolic Ahlfors-David regular and assume that $Σ$ satisfies a 2-sided corkscrew condition. Assume, in addition, that $Σ$ is either time-forwards Ahlfors-David regular, time-backwards Ahlfors-David regular, or parabolic uniform rectifiable. We then first prove that $Σ$ satisfies a {\it weak synchronized two cube condition}. Based on this we are able to revisit the argument in \cite{NS} and prove that $Σ$ contains {\it uniform big pieces of Lip(1,1/2) graphs}. When $Σ$ is parabolic uniformly rectifiable the construction can be refined and in this case we prove that $Σ$ contains {\it uniform big pieces of regular parabolic Lip(1,1/2) graphs}. Similar results hold if $Ω\subset\mathbb R^{n+1}$ is a connected component of $\mathbb R^{n+1}\setminusΣ$ and in this context we also give a parabolic counterpart of the main result in \cite{AHMNT} by proving that if $Ω$ is a one-sided parabolic chord arc domain, and if $Σ$ is parabolic uniformly rectifiable, then $Ω$ is in fact a parabolic chord arc domain. Our results give a flexible parabolic version of the classical (elliptic) result of G. David and D. Jerison concerning the existence of uniform big pieces of Lipschitz graphs for sets satisfying a two disc condition.

math.AP↗

arXiv2020

Coronizations and big pieces in metric spaces

We prove that coronizations with respect to arbitrary d-regular sets (not necessarily graphs) imply big pieces squared of these (approximating) sets. This is known (and due to David and Semmes in the case of sufficiently large co-dimension, and to Azzam and Schul in general) in the (classical) setting of Euclidean spaces with Hausdorff measure of integer dimension, where the approximating sets are Lipschitz graphs. Our result is a far reaching generalization of these results and we prove that coronizations imply big pieces squared is a generic property. In particular, our result applies, when suitably interpreted, in metric spaces having a fixed positive (perhaps non-integer) dimension, equipped with a Borel regular measure and with arbitrary approximating sets. As a novel application we highlight how to utilize this general setting in the context of parabolic uniform rectifiability.

math.CA↗

arXiv2020

Uniform rectifiability and elliptic operators satisfying a Carleson measure condition

The present paper establishes the correspondence between the properties of the solutions of a class of PDEs and the geometry of sets in Euclidean space. We settle the question of whether (quantitative) absolute continuity of the elliptic measure with respect to the surface measure and uniform rectifiability of the boundary are equivalent, in an optimal class of divergence form elliptic operators satisfying a suitable Carleson measure condition. The result can be viewed as a quantitative analogue of the Wiener criterion adapted to the singular $L^p$ data case. We split our proof on two main steps. In the first one we considered the case in which the desired Carleson measure condition on the coefficients holds with "sufficiently small constant", using a novel application of techniques developed in geometric measure theory. In the second step we establish the final result, that is, the "large constant case". The key elements are a powerful extrapolation argument, which provides a general pathway to self-improve scale-invariant small constant estimates, and a new mechanism to transfer quantitative absolute continuity of elliptic measure between a domain and its subdomains.

math.AP↗

arXiv2020

Harmonic measure and quantitative connectivity: geometric characterization of the $L^p$-solvability of the Dirichlet problem

It is well-known that quantitative, scale invariant absolute continuity (more precisely, the weak-$A_\infty$ property) of harmonic measure with respect to surface measure, on the boundary of an open set $ Ω\subset \mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ with Ahlfors-David regular boundary, is equivalent to the solvability of the Dirichlet problem in $Ω$, with data in $L^p(\partialΩ)$ for some $p<\infty$. In this paper, we give a geometric characterization of the weak-$A_\infty$ property, of harmonic measure, and hence of solvability of the $L^p$ Dirichlet problem for some finite $p$. This characterization is obtained under background hypotheses (an interior corkscrew condition, along with Ahlfors-David regularity of the boundary) that are natural, and in a certain sense optimal: we provide counter-examples in the absence of either of them (or even one of the two, upper or lower, Ahlfors-David bounds); moreover, the examples show that the upper and lower Ahlfors-David bounds are each quantitatively sharp.

math.CA↗

arXiv2020

Uniform rectifiability implies Varopoulos extensions

We construct extensions of Varopolous type for functions $f \in \text{BMO}(E)$, for any uniformly rectifiable set $E$ of codimension one. More precisely, let $Ω\subset \mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ be an open set satisfying the corkscrew condition, with an $n$-dimensional uniformly rectifiable boundary $\partial Ω$, and let $σ:= \mathcal{H}^n\lfloor_{\partial Ω}$ denote the surface measure on $\partial Ω$. We show that if $f \in \text{BMO}(\partial Ω,dσ)$ with compact support on $\partial Ω$, then there exists a smooth function $V$ in $Ω$ such that $|\nabla V(Y)| \, dY$ is a Carleson measure with Carleson norm controlled by the BMO norm of $f$, and such that $V$ converges in some non-tangential sense to $f$ almost everywhere with respect to $σ$. Our results should be compared to recent geometric characterizations of $L^p$-solvability and of BMO-solvability of the Dirichlet problem, by Azzam, the first author, Martell, Mourgoglou and Tolsa and by the first author and Le, respectively. In combination, this latter pair of results shows that one can construct, for all $f \in C_c(\partial Ω)$, a harmonic extension $u$, with $|\nabla u(Y)|^2 \text{dist}(Y,\partial Ω) \, dY $ a Carleson measure controlled by the BMO norm of $f$, only in the presence of an appropriate quantitative connectivity condition.

math.AP↗

arXiv2020

Critical Perturbations for Second Order Elliptic Operators. Part I: Square function bounds for layer potentials

This is the first part of a series of two papers where we study perturbations of divergence form second order elliptic operators $-\mathop{\operatorname{div}} A \nabla$ by first and zero order terms, whose coefficients lie in critical spaces, via the method of layer potentials. In particular, we show that the $L^2$ well-posedness of the Dirichlet, Neumann and Regularity problems for complex Hermitian, block form, or constant-coefficient divergence form elliptic operators in the upper half-space are all stable under such perturbations. For instance, this allows us to claim the first results in the setting of an unbounded domain concerning the solvability of boundary value problems for the magnetic Schr\"odinger operator $-(\nabla-i{\bf a})^2+V$ when the magnetic potential ${\bf a}$ and the electric potential $V$ are accordingly small in the norm of a scale-invariant Lebesgue space. In the present paper, we establish $L^2$ control of the square function via a vector-valued $Tb$ theorem and abstract layer potentials, and use these square function bounds to obtain uniform slice bounds for solutions. The existence and uniqueness of solutions, as well as bounds for the non-tangential maximal operator, are considered in the upcoming paper.

math.AP↗