On the interplay among maximum principles, compact support principles and Keller-Osserman conditions on manifolds

Abstract

This paper is about the influence of Geometry on the qualitative behaviour of solutions of quasilinear PDEs on Riemannian manifolds. Motivated by examples arising, among others, from the theory of submanifolds, in particular by the study of entire graphs with prescribed mean curvature, we consider classes of coercive differential inequalities of the form $$ \mathrm{div}\left( \frac{\varphi(|\nabla u|)}{|\nabla u|} \nabla u\right) \ge b(x)f(u) l(|\nabla u|) \qquad \text{(respectively, $\le$ or $=$)} $$ on domains of a manifold $M$, for suitable $\varphi,b,f,l$, with emphasis on mean curvature type operators. We investigate the validity of strong maximum principles, compact support principles and Liouville type theorems; in particular, the goal is to identify sharp thresholds, involving curvatures or volume growth of geodesic balls in $M$, to guarantee the above properties under appropriate Keller-Osserman type conditions, and to discuss the geometric reasons behind the existence of such thresholds. The paper also aims to give a unified view of recent results in the literature. The bridge with Geometry is realized by studying the validity of weak and strong maximum principles at infinity, in the spirit of Omori-Yau's Hessian and Laplacian principles and subsequent improvements.