A new approach to interior estimates for fully nonlinear elliptic equations

Abstract

We give new, elementary proofs of interior second derivative estimates for the Monge-Ampère equation and the constant quadratic Hessian equation, based on the two-point maximum principle. The arguments require only one differentiation of the equation. For the Monge-Ampère equation, the inhomogeneous term is assumed to be positive and continuously differentiable. For the quadratic Hessian equation, the estimate holds in every dimension $n\ge 2$.