Liouville-type theorems for Lane--Emden inequalities involving nonlocal operators

Abstract

We establish a Liouville-type theorem for nonnegative weak supersolutions to $\mathcal{L}_K u = u^q$ in $\mathbb{R}^n$, where $\mathcal{L}_K$ is a translation-invariant integro-differential operator of order $2s$ with $s \in (0,1)$. The kernel $K$ is assumed to be even and satisfy uniform ellipticity bounds. We prove that the only nonnegative supersolution is the trivial one $u \equiv 0$ in the range $1 < q \le \frac{n}{n-2s}$ for $n > 2s$ (and for all $q > 1$ when $n \le 2s$). Our proof is elementary and relies on a test function method combined with a dyadic decomposition of the nonlocal tail. Notably, our argument does not rely on the maximum principle or the fundamental solution.