Gradient continuity estimates for the normalized $p$-Poisson equation

Abstract

In this paper, we obtain gradient continuity estimates for viscosity solutions of $\Delta_{p}^N u= f$ in terms of the scaling critical $L(n,1 )$ norm of $f$, where $\Delta_{p}^N$ is the normalized $p-$Laplacian operator defined in (1.2) below. Our main result, Theorem 2.2, corresponds to the borderline gradient continuity estimate in terms of the modified Riesz potential $\tilde I^{f}_{q}$. Moreover, for $f \in L^{m}$ with $m>n$, we also obtain $C^{1,\alpha}$ estimates, see Theorem 2.3 below. This improves one of the regularity results in [3], where a $C^{1,\alpha}$ estimate was established depending on the $L^{m}$ norm of $f$ under the additional restriction that $p>2$ and $m > \text{max} (2,n, \frac{p}{2}) $ (see Theorem 1.2 in [3]). We also mention that differently from the approach in [3], which uses methods from divergence form theory and nonlinear potential theory in the proof of Theorem 1.2, our method is more non-variational in nature, and it is based on separation of phases inspired by the ideas in [36]. Moreover, for $f$ continuous, our approach also gives a somewhat different proof of the $C^{1, \alpha}$ regularity result, Theorem 1.1, in [3].