English

Symmetry for a fully nonlinear free boundary problem with highly singular term

Analysis of PDEs 2022-07-05 v1

Abstract

In this paper we prove radial symmetry for solutions to a free boundary problem with a singular right hand side, in both elliptic and parabolic regime. More exactly, in the unit ball B1B_1 we consider a solution to the fully nonlinear elliptic problem {F(D2u)=f(u)in B1{u>0},u=Mon B1,0u<Min B1, \begin{cases} F(D^2u)=f(u)&\text{in }B_1 \cap \{u >0 \},\\ u=M&\text{on }\partial B_1,\\ 0\le u<M&\text{in }B_1,\end{cases} where the right hand side f(u)f(u) , near u=0u=0, behaves like uau^a with negative values for a(1,0)a \in (-1,0). Due to lack of C2C^2-smoothness of both uu and the free boundary {u>0}\partial\{u>0\}, we cannot apply the well-known Serrin-type boundary point lemma. We circumvent this by an exact assumption on a first order expansion and the decay on the second order, along with an ad-hoc comparison principle. We treat equally the parabolic case of the problem, and state a corresponding result.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2207.01157,
  title  = {Symmetry for a fully nonlinear free boundary problem with highly singular term},
  author = {Layan El Hajj and Seongmin Jeon and Henrik Shahgholian},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2207.01157},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

19 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-24T12:12:41.301Z