The Harnack inequality for a class of degenerate elliptic operators

Abstract

We prove a Harnack inequality for distributional solutions to a type of degenerate elliptic PDEs in $N$ dimensions. The differential operators in question are related to the Kolmogorov operator, made up of the Laplacian in the last $N-1$ variables, a first-order term corresponding to a shear flow in the direction of the first variable, and a bounded measurable potential term. The first-order coefficient is a smooth function of the last $N-1$ variables and its derivatives up to certain order do not vanish simultaneously at any point, making the operators in question hypoelliptic.