Differential Harnack inequalities and maximum principles of Morel-Oswald type for elliptic PDE in divergence form

Abstract

This paper presents two types of novel, qualitative and quantitative, estimates for positive solutions of general uniformly elliptic PDEs in divergence form. First, we prove a Morel-Oswald type of extension of the Hopf-Oleinik lemma, in which in addition we specify the sharp dependence of the constant in the data of the operator and the size of the domain. Second, we establish a new differential Harnack (logarithmic gradient) estimate for non-homogeneous equations, as well as an optimal global differential Harnack estimate for homogeneous equations.

This preprint stems from preprint ArXiV 2411.19367, which was split in two parts, and whose results have been substantially improved and extended