Boundary harmonic coordinates on manifolds with boundary in low regularity

Abstract

In this paper, we prove the existence of $H^2$-regular coordinates on Riemannian $3$-manifolds with boundary, assuming only $L^2$-bounds on the Ricci curvature, $L^4$-bounds on the second fundamental form of the boundary, and a positive lower bound on the volume radius. The proof follows by extending the theory of Cheeger-Gromov convergence to include manifolds with boundary in the above low regularity setting. The main tools are boundary harmonic coordinates together with elliptic estimates and a geometric trace estimate, and a rigidity argument using manifold doubling. Assuming higher regularity of the Ricci curvature, we also prove corresponding higher regularity estimates for the coordinates.