Towards a Liouville theorem for continuous viscosity solutions to fully nonlinear elliptic equations in conformal geometry

Abstract

We study entire continuous viscosity solutions to fully nonlinear elliptic equations involving the conformal Hessian. We prove the strong comparison principle and Hopf Lemma for (non-uniformly) elliptic equations when one of the competitors is $C^{1,1}$. We obtain as a consequence a Liouville theorem for entire solutions which are approximable by $C^{1,1}$ solutions on larger and larger compact domains, and, in particular, for entire $C^{1,1}_{\rm loc}$ solutions: they are either constants or standard bubbles.