Sharp estimates for Green potentials on non-smooth domains

Abstract

Given an open, bounded, connected domain Ω ⊂ R n , let GD, GN be the solution operators for the Poisson equation for the Laplacian in Ω with homogeneous Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions, respectively.The aim of this note is to describe the sharp ranges of indices for which GD, GN are smoothing operators of order two, on Besov and Triebel-Lizorkin scales in arbitrary Lipschitz domains.This builds on the work of many people who have dealt with homogeneous/inhomogenous problems for the Laplacian with Dirichlet/Neumann boundary conditions in Lipschitz domains; an excellent account can be found in [23].Earlier results emphasized homogeneous problems with boundary data exhibiting an integer amount of smoothness.Such estimates underpin the entire work here and play the role of end-point/limiting cases in our theory. The main theorems we prove extend the work of D.Jerison and C.Kenig [20], whose methods and results are largely restricted to the case p ≥ 1, and answer the open problem # 3.2.21 on p.121 in C. Kenig’s book [23] in the most complete fashion.When specialized to Hardy spaces (viewed as a subclass of Triebel-Lizorkin scale), our results provide a solution of a (strengthened form of a) conjecture made by D.-C.Chang, S.Krantz and E.Stein regarding the regularity of the Green potentials on Hardy spaces in Lipschitz domains.Cf. p.130 of [5] where the authors write: “ For some applications it would be desirable to find minimal smoothness conditions on ∂Ω in order for our analysis of the Dirichlet and Neumann problems to remain valid. We do not know whether C 1+e boundary is sufficient in order to obtain [Hardy space] estimates for the Dirichlet problem when p is near 1. [...]