Harnack Theory and Rigidity for Singular and Degenerate Fully Nonlinear Elliptic Equations with Hamiltonians

Abstract

We study regularity, Harnack inequalities, Liouville rigidity, and principal eigenvalues for viscosity solutions of singular or degenerate fully nonlinear elliptic equations $\Phi (x,|\nabla u|)F(D^{2}u)-H(x,\nabla u)+c(x)|u{|}^{i(\Phi )}u=h(x)$ in a bounded domain $\Omega$, where $\Phi$ describes the singular or degenerate dependence on the gradient and $H$ is a Hamiltonian. We first prove global $C^{1,\gamma }$ regularity for the Dirichlet problem without lower-order terms. The argument combines a global $L^{\infty }$ estimate from the Alexandroff--Bakelman--Pucci inequality, boundary barriers yielding a global Lipschitz bound, and a compactness-based iterative approximation scheme. We next establish an additive Harnack inequality for nonnegative viscosity solutions by sliding from below a cusp function of the form $-|x{|}^{1/2}$. Under an additional homogeneity assumption, this yields the classical Harnack inequality and Liouville-type theorems in ${\mathbb{R}}^n$. Finally, under suitable homogeneity and comparison assumptions, we develop a generalized Dirichlet principal-eigenvalue theory for the full operator. We prove the existence of principal eigenfunctions and characterize the associated eigenvalues through maximum and minimum principles. These results provide a unified framework for global regularity, Harnack estimates, Liouville rigidity, and principal eigenvalues for a broad class of singular and degenerate fully nonlinear equations with Hamiltonian terms.