Quantitative uniqueness of continuation result related to Hopf's lemma

Abstract

The classical Hopf's lemma can be reformulated as uniqueness of continuation result. We aim in the present work to quantify this property. We show precisely that if a solution $u$ of a divergence form elliptic equation attains its maximum at a boundary point $x_0$ then both $L^1$-norms of $u-u(x_0)$ on the domain and on the boundary are bounded, up to a multiplicative constant, by the exterior normal derivative at $x_0$.