Gradient bounds for viscosity solutions to certain elliptic equations

Abstract

Our principal object of study is the modulus of continuity of a periodic or uniformly vanishing function \( u: \mathbb{R} ^{n} \rightarrow \mathbb{R} \) which satisfies a degenerate elliptic equation \( F(x, u, \nabla u, D^{2} u) = 0 \) in the viscosity sense. The equations under consideration here have second-order terms of the form \( -{\rm Trace} \, (\mathcal{A} (\|\nabla u \|) \cdot D^{2} u) , \) where \( \mathcal{A} \) is an \( n\times n\) matrix which is symmetric and positive semi-definite. Following earlier work, \cite{Li21}, of the second author, which addressed the parabolic case, we identify a one-dimensional equation for which the modulus of continuity is a subsolution. In favorable cases, this one-dimensional operator can be used to derive a gradient bound on $u$ or to draw other conclusions about the nature of the solution.