Hardy spaces for the Lam\'e equation

Abstract

We study, for $1 \leq p \leq \infty$, the Hardy space $\bm{h}_e^p(\B)$, the elastic analogue of the classical Hardy spaces of harmonic functions in the unit ball of $\mathbb{R}^3$. The space consists of vector-field solutions of the Lam\'e system satisfying the standard integrability condition on concentric spheres centered at the origin. Using the elastic Poisson kernel, we establish a Fatou-type theorem and show that $\bm{h}_e^p(\B)$ is isomorphic to the $\mathbb{R}^3$-valued Lebesgue space $L^p$ on the unit sphere for $1 < p \leq \infty$, while $\bm{h}_e^1(\B)$ corresponds to the space of $\mathbb{R}^3$-valued Borel measures on the unit sphere. For $1 < p < \infty$, we prove that $\bm{h}_e^p(\B)$ decomposes as the direct sum of three subspaces. The main contribution of this paper is to describe each of these subspaces along with the corresponding spaces of boundary values. In particular, two of these spaces consist of solutions of the Lam\'e equation for all eligible choices of the Lam\'e constants: one of them is the space of Riesz fields (solutions of the generalized Cauchy--Riemann equations) in $\bm{h}_e^p(\B)$; the second is the space of fields given by the cross product of $x$ with such Riesz fields. The results rely on the classical decomposition of $L^2$ vector fields on the sphere into the direct sum of three spaces of vector spherical harmonics, which we extend to $L^p$.