English

Asymptotic expansions for harmonic functions at conical boundary points

Analysis of PDEs 2023-07-21 v1

Abstract

We prove three theorems about the asymptotic behavior of solutions uu to the homogeneous Dirichlet problem for the Laplace equation at boundary points with tangent cones. First, under very mild hypotheses, we show that the doubling index of uu either has a unique finite limit, or goes to infinity; in other words, there is a well-defined order of vanishing. Second, under more quantitative hypotheses, we prove that if the order of vanishing of uu is finite at a boundary point 00, then locally u(x)=xmψ(x/x)+o(xm)u(x) = |x|^m \psi(x/|x|) + o(|x|^m), where xmψ(x/x)|x|^m \psi(x/|x|) is a homogeneous harmonic function on the tangent cone. Finally, we construct a convex domain in three dimensions where such an expansion fails at a boundary point, showing that some quantitative hypotheses are necessary in general. The assumptions in all of the results only involve regularity at a single point, and in particular are much weaker than what is necessary for unique continuation, monotonicity of Almgren's frequency, Carleman estimates, or other related techniques.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2307.10517,
  title  = {Asymptotic expansions for harmonic functions at conical boundary points},
  author = {Dennis Kriventsov and Zongyuan Li},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2307.10517},
  year   = {2023}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T11:35:25.879Z