Excess decay for quasilinear equations in the Heisenberg group and consequences

Abstract

We study regularity results for the solutions of quasilinear subelliptic $p$-Laplace type equation in Heisenberg groups. We prove somewhat surprising excess decay estimates for the constant coefficient homogeneous equation. Excess decay estimates, while well known in the Euclidean case, due to the celebrated works of Uraltseva and Uhlenbeck, was not known in the setting of Heisenberg groups until now and this lack of excess decay estimate is often attributed to the noncommutativity of the horizontal vector fields. Our results show that, in spite of the this noncommutative feature, excess decay estimates analogous to the Euclidean case hold. To illustrate the potency of our excess decay estimates, we prove two results. First is a Hölder continuity result that extends the presently known results to the full range $1< p < \infty.$ The second is a sharp borderline continuity result for the horizontal gradient of the solution. More precisely, we show that if $u \in HW_{\text{loc}}^{1,p}$ satisfies $$\operatorname{div}_{\mathbb{H}} \left( a(x) \lvert \mathfrak X u \rvert^{p-2} \mathfrak X u \right) \in L^{(Q,1)}_{\text{loc}}$$ in a domain of $\mathbb{H}_{n},$ where $\mathbb{H}_{n}$ is the Heisenberg group with homogeneous dimension $Q=2n+2,$ for $1 < p < \infty, $ with uniformly positive, bounded, Dini continuous scalar function $a$, then $\mathfrak X u$ is continuous. This generalizes the classical result by Stein and the work of Kuusi-Mingione for linear and quasilinear equations, respectively, in the Euclidean case and Folland-Stein for the linear case in the Heisenberg group setting. This result is new even when either $a$ is constant or when the equation is homogeneous.