Potential estimates and improved Sobolev regularity for nonlocal fully nonlinear elliptic equations

Abstract

This paper investigates pointwise and oscillatory potential estimates for viscosity solutions and their gradients to a class of nonlocal fully nonlinear elliptic equations. The key ingredient of our argument is to establish precise pointwise bounds for a novel fractional sharp maximal function defined in terms of affine functions. As an immediate consequence, we prove higher order Sobolev regularity results of Calderón-Zygmund type for such equations without imposing any global boundedness assumptions on viscosity solutions. The potential theory developed herein extends the work of Daskalopoulos-Kuusi-Mingione (Commun. Partial Differ. Equ. 39: 574-590, 2014) for fully nonlinear second order elliptic equations to the fractional fully nonlinear setting.