On unique continuation principles for some elliptic systems

Abstract

In this paper we prove unique continuation principles for some systems of elliptic partial differential equations satisfying a suitable superlinearity condition. As an application, we obtain nonexistence of nontrivial (not necessarily positive) radial solutions for the Lane-Emden system posed in a ball, in the critical and supercritical regimes. Some of our results also apply to general fully nonlinear operators, such as Pucci's extremal operators, being new even for scalar equations.