Abstract
Using a version of Hironaka’s resolution of singularities for real-analytic functions, any elliptic multiplier \(\text {Op}(p)\) of order \(d>0\), real-analytic near \(p^{-1}(0)\), has a fundamental solution \(\mu _0\). We give an integral representation of \(\mu _0\) in terms of the resolutions supplied by Hironaka’s theorem. This \(\mu _0\) is weakly approximated in \(H^t_{\text {loc}}({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) for \(t<d-\frac{n}{2}\) by a sequence from a Paley-Wiener space. In special cases of global symmetry, the obtained integral representation can be made fully explicit, and we use this to compute fundamental solutions for two non-polynomial symbols.
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
1 Introduction
Let \( {\mathcal {S}}'({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) denote the space of tempered distributions on \( {\mathbb {R}}^n\). A fundamental solution of \(\text {Op}(p) = {\mathcal {F}}^{-1}p{\mathcal {F}}\) is a \(\mu _0 \in {\mathcal {S}}'({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) such that
where \(\delta _0\) is the unit measure at 0, \({\mathcal {F}}\) is the Fourier transform, and p is the symbol. The study of these is classical, and most results are recorded in standard texts [7, 8]. The Hörmander–Lojasiewicz theorem [6, 9] ensures existence when p is a polynomial, and provides a way to construct a \(\mu _0\), at least in principle, explicitly from the symbol. But the situation becomes nebulous when p is not a polynomial or globally smooth. We address this problem when \(p^{-1}(0)\) is compact and p is real-analytic near \(p^{-1}(0)\), and obtain an integral representation that clearly shows the structure of \(\mu _0\).
In order to do so, we use a variant of Hironaka’s resolution of singularities [1]. Generally, the local charts that are supplied by Hironaka’s theorem are unknowable, but they allow us to build an integral representation out of the geometry of \(p^{-1}(0)\). Occasionally, a diffeomorphism that brings p into a resolved form can replace them, and such a diffeomorphism can often be constructed when there is global symmetry. Important examples with this property include any sum of powers of the Laplacian, or any sum of powers of certain elliptic self-adjoint second-order differential operators. However, the novel and most interesting case for us here is when p is not a polynomial, and p is not necessarily globally smooth, but with dimension \(n>1\) and order \(d>0\). We give examples showing the utility of this approach.
A lot of research has been devoted to the construction of explicit representations. See e.g. Ortner and Wagner [10] and Camus [3, 4] for a broad class of operators. Usually, it is very difficult to find explicit representations of fundamental solutions, and the study is often focused on a particular operator of fixed order and dimension. In the case of general homogeneous elliptic and some types of non-elliptic operators, Camus [3, 4] obtained explicit representations valid for any number of dimensions. Apart from the base practical value of constructing general solutions via convolution, an explicit form may find application in proofs of mapping properties of its operator. See e.g. Rabier [11], where the solution obtained in [3], implicit in [7], is used.
2 Notation
Let \(p\in C({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) be real-analytic in a neighbourhood of \(p^{-1}(0) \ne \emptyset \). It must be smooth outside an open ball B(0, R) centered at 0 of some radius \(R>0\). Putting \(\langle \xi \rangle = (1+ |\xi |^2)^\frac{1}{2}\) for \(\xi \in {\mathbb {R}}^n\), it must satisfy
and the ellipticity constraint
Definition 2.1
(The Paley-Wiener spaces) Let \(K \subset {\mathbb {R}}^n\) be compact and convex. Define \(\text {PW}^d_K({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) to be the space of entire functions u satisfying
If \(\{ K_j \}_{j=1}^\infty \) is an exhaustion of \({\mathbb {R}}^n\) by compact convex sets, we put
Moreover, we put \(\text {PW}^{-\infty }({\mathbb {R}}^n) = \cap _{d\in {\mathbb {Z}}} \, \text {PW}^{d}({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) and \(\text {PW}^{+\infty }({\mathbb {R}}^n) = \cup _{d\in {\mathbb {Z}}} \, \text {PW}^{d}({\mathbb {R}}^n)\).
These spaces are related to \( {\mathcal {E}}'({\mathbb {R}}^n)\), the compactly supported distributions on \({\mathbb {R}}^n\). We write \(H^{t}_\text {loc}({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) for the Frechet space of distributions locally belonging to \(H^{t}({\mathbb {R}}^n)\), and \(H^{-t}_\text {comp}({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) for its dual space of compactly supported distributions in \(H^{-t}({\mathbb {R}}^n)\). Finally, \( {\mathcal {S}}({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) is the Schwartz space, \(u\in {\mathcal {S}}({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) decays faster than any polynomial, and we put \({\mathcal {F}}u(\xi ) = \int _{{\mathbb {R}}^n} e^{-ix\cdot \xi } u(x) \, dx\) and \({\mathcal {F}}^{-1}u(x) = \frac{1}{(2\pi )^n}{\mathcal {F}}u(-x)\) for \(x,\xi \in {\mathbb {R}}^n\).
3 Solution Operator
Our main tool is Hironaka’s resolution of singularities. Often it is stated abstractly [2], but we need a local embedded version.
Theorem 3.1
(Local embedded version of Hironaka’s theorem. From Atiyah [1]) Let \(U\subset {\mathbb {R}}^n \) be an open neighbourhood of 0, and let f be a function \(0 \not \equiv f \in C^\omega (U)\). Then there is an open \(0 \in V\subset U\), a real-analytic manifold M, and a map
It has the following properties:
-
1.
\(\Psi : M \rightarrow V\) is proper and real-analytic.
-
2.
\(\Psi : M {\setminus } (f\circ \Phi )^{-1}(0) \rightarrow V {\setminus } f^{-1}(0) \) is a real-analytic diffeomorphism.
-
3.
\((f\circ \Psi )^{-1}(0)\) is a hypersurface in M with normal crossings.
As p is real-analytic near its zero-set, it is compact with Lebesgue measure zero. The resolution theorem implies that p can be written locally in normal crossing form. Fix an open cover \(\{V_j\}_{j=1}^N\) of \(p^{-1}(0)\) and open \(\{U_j\}_{j=1}^N\) such that
-
1.
\(\Psi _j: U_j{\setminus } (p\circ \Psi _j)^{-1}(0) \rightarrow V_j{\setminus } p^{-1}(0)\) is a real-analytic diffeomorphism,
-
2.
\((p\circ \Psi _j)(x) = c_j(x) x^{\alpha _j}\) for all \(x\in U_j\) for some \(\alpha _j \in {\mathbb {N}}_0^n\),
where each \(c_j\) is a complex-valued, but nowhere zero, real-analytic function on \(U_j\). Also, we put \(m=\max \{\alpha _j\}_{j=1}^N\).
Theorem 3.2
Let \(\{\chi _j \}_{j=1}^N\) be any partition of unity subordinate to \(\{V_j\}_{j=1}^N\). There is a fundamental solution \(\mu _0\), smooth away from \(x = 0\), of the form
where \(\chi = 1-\sum _{j=1}^N \chi _j\), and the \(I_j\) are given a.e. by
It is weakly approximated in \(H^t_{\text {loc}}({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) for \(t< d- \frac{n}{2}\) by a sequence in \(\text {PW}^{m}({\mathbb {R}}^n)\). Finally, if \(p^{-1}(0)\) is embedded, any \(v \in \ker \text {Op}(p) \subset \text {PW}^\infty ({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) is of the form
where \(u_{j,k} \in {\mathcal {E}}'(U_j^0)\) are supported in the \(z_n = 0\) slice \(U_j^0 = \{ z \in {\mathbb {R}}^{n-1} \, | \, (z,0) \in U_j \}\), and each \(\Psi _j\) is arranged so that
In this case, all other fundamental solutions differ from \(\mu _0\) by such a v.
The first step is to prove a lemma about principal value integrals with log kernel. It is used here in a way similar to Björk [2, Chapter 6, Theorem 1.5].
Lemma 3.3
Let \(\psi \in C^\infty ({\mathbb {R}})\) be either rapidly decaying or compactly supported. Then, for any \(k \in {\mathbb {N}}\), we have
Proof
The proof of this is a routine exercise in repeated integration by parts. Observe that we can write \(\psi (r) = r^{-k}r^k \psi (r)\), and
where all boundary terms at 0 in the final integration vanish, because
and boundary terms at \(\pm \infty \) vanish by the hypothesis on \(\psi \). \(\square \)
Lemma 3.4
Define \(Q: {\mathcal {S}}({\mathbb {R}}^n) \rightarrow C^\infty ({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) by
Then \(P = \text {Op}(\frac{\chi }{p}) + Q \) satisfies both
Proof
The proof is an application of Lemma 3.3 and the Fubini–Tonelli theorem. Let \(\psi \in {\mathcal {S}}({\mathbb {R}}^n)\). Using Lemma 3.3 coordinate-wise, we compute
and we then get
Point-wise in \(x\in {\mathbb {R}}^n\), we compute
which shows that
Note that the properties of \(\Psi _j\) ensure that all the above integrals are well-defined. The determinant of \(d\Psi _j\) on each component of \(U_j {\setminus } (p\circ \Psi _j)^{-1}(0)\) never becomes zero. This completes the proof. \(\square \)
Lemma 3.5
\(P: {\mathcal {S}}({\mathbb {R}}^n) \rightarrow C^\infty ({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) is continuous.
Proof
The proof is just estimating \(C^\infty ({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) semi-norms of Q in those of \({\mathcal {S}}({\mathbb {R}}^n)\). By the chain rule, if \(v\in {\mathcal {S}}({\mathbb {R}}^n)\), we have
Using the Leibniz rule, we get for any \(\alpha \in {\mathbb {N}}^n_0\) some \(C_\alpha ',C_\alpha > 0\) such that
which by the continuity of \({\mathcal {F}}: {\mathcal {S}}({\mathbb {R}}^n) \rightarrow {\mathcal {S}}({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) implies the lemma. \(\square \)
Lemma 3.6
\(P: \text {PW}^{-\infty }({\mathbb {R}}^n) \rightarrow \text {PW}^m({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) is well-defined.
Proof
Because each map \(\Psi _j\) is proper, each \(( \chi _j {\mathcal {F}}v )\circ \Psi _j\) is compactly supported. By the well-known [7, Paley–Wiener–Schwartz Theorem 7.3.1], \(\text {Op}(\frac{\chi }{p})v \in \text {PW}^{-\infty }({\mathbb {R}}^n)\). A simple estimate gives \(C',C>0\) such that
where K is a compact and convex set so large that
and so Qv is entire with \(Qv \in \text {PW}^{m}({\mathbb {R}}^n)\). \(\square \)
Define the reflection map A by \(A\psi (x) = \psi (-x)\) for all \(x\in {\mathbb {R}}^n\) on \(\psi \in C^\infty ({\mathbb {R}}^n)\). It takes \({\mathcal {S}}({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) and \(C^\infty _0({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) continuously to themselves. The transpose of Q is AQA. Using this fact and Lemma 3.5, we extend Q, hence P, by duality:
Definition 3.7
Define \(Q: u\mapsto Qu: {\mathcal {E}}'({\mathbb {R}}^n) \rightarrow {\mathcal {S}}'({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) by
Lemma 3.8
\(\text {Op}(p)Ps = s\) holds for any \(s\in {\mathcal {E}}'({\mathbb {R}}^n)\).
Proof
By Lemma 3.4, if \(\psi \in {\mathcal {S}}({\mathbb {R}}^n)\), we have
\(\square \)
Applying Lemma 3.8, we get the fundamental solution \(\mu _0 = P\delta _0\) for the operator. Using e.g. [12, Theorems 5.2 and 7.1], or similar in [5], it is smooth in \(x \ne 0\), and
Lemma 3.9
\(\mu _0\) is weakly approximated in \(H^t_{\text {loc}}({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) by a \(\text {PW}^{m}({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) sequence.
Proof
Take a bump function \(\eta \in C^\infty _0({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) such that \(\eta (x) = 1\) holds for all \(|x|<1\). Put \(\eta _k(x) = \eta (\frac{x}{k})\) for all \(x \in {\mathbb {R}}^n\) and \(k\in {\mathbb {N}}\). By Lemma 3.6, \(P{\mathcal {F}}^{-1}\eta _k \in \text {PW}^{m}({\mathbb {R}}^n)\). Given any \(u\in H^{-t}_{\text {comp}}({\mathbb {R}}^n)\), then for k large enough, we get
and so \(P{\mathcal {F}}^{-1}\eta _k \rightarrow \mu _0\) weakly in \(H^t_{\text {loc}}({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) as \(k\rightarrow \infty \). \(\square \)
Lemma 3.10
Suppose that \(p^{-1}(0)\) is embedded as a real-analytic submanifold. Then \(\ker \text {Op}(p)\) consists of functions \(v \in \text {PW}^{\infty }({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) of the form
where \(u_{j,k} \in {\mathcal {E}}'(U_j^0)\) and \(\Psi _j\) are precisely as stated in Theorem 3.2.
Proof
Observe that \(p{\mathcal {F}}v = 0\) implies \(\text {supp}\, {\mathcal {F}}v \subset p^{-1}(0)\) so that \({\mathcal {F}}v\) is compact. Again by [7, Theorem 7.3.1], \(v \in \text {PW}^{\infty }({\mathbb {R}}^n)\). Observe then that
and since \(c_j\) is never zero, by [7, Theorem 2.3.5], we must have
where \(u_{j,k} \in {\mathcal {E}}'({\mathbb {R}}^{n-1})\) are some distributions supported inside the \(z_n = 0\) slice of \(U_j\). It follows that
\(\square \)
The main Theorem 3.2 is finally obtained by combining the above partial results. Unfortunately, it is impossible to obtain \(\Psi _j\) explicitly for any given multiplier symbol. But if, for example, \(p^{-1}(0)\) is the real-analytic boundary of some star-convex domain, we can replace the charts by a single deformation \(\Psi \) of the boundary onto a sphere. Given p, we look for \(\Psi \) so that \(\Psi ^* p\) factorizes. Our main theorem gives
where \(\chi \) appropriately suppresses a region surrounding \(p^{-1}(0)\) on which \(\Psi \) is defined (Fig. 1).
3.1 Sums of powers of \(\Delta _g\)
Let g be a positive-definite symmetric matrix. Consider for \(d\in {\mathbb {N}}\) and \(\{c_j\}_{j=0}^{d}\subset {\mathbb {C}}\) with \(c_d = 1\) and \(c_0 \ne 0\) the multiplier
The symbol p is taken into a polynomial form by the map
Pulling back, we find that
where c is a polynomial with no root in \([0,\infty )\), and \(r_j>0\) are the positive real roots. Let \(C_{j,k}\) be the unique coefficients in \(\prod ^m_{j=1} (r-r_j)^{-m_j} = \sum _{j=1}^m \sum ^{m_j}_{k=1} C_{j,k} (r-r_j)^{-k}\). Pick \(\chi \in C^\infty ({\mathbb {R}}^n)\) so that \(1-\chi \circ \Psi \in C^\infty _0((0,\infty )\times {\mathbb {S}}^{n-1})\) is independent of \(\omega \in {\mathbb {S}}^{n-1}\), and equal to 1 in a neighbourhood of \(\cup _{j=1}^m \{r_j\} \times {\mathbb {S}}^{n-1}\), all of the spheres of radius \(r_j\). If the multiplicities satisfy \(m_j< n\), we have
where \(J_{\frac{n}{2}-1}\) is the cylindrical Bessel function of order \(\frac{n}{2}-1\), and
3.2 A perturbation of \(\Delta _g\)
Let \(\arg \xi \) be the multi-valued argument of \(\xi \in {\mathbb {R}}^2\). Consider instead the multiplier symbol
where \(n \in {\mathbb {N}}\) and \(a<\frac{1}{2}\). It is certainly real-analytic near its star-shaped zero-set. This p is taken into normal crossing form by the map
It is clear that \(\Psi \) is a diffeomorphism onto its image, not covering the whole zero-set, as depicted in Fig. 2. But a representation using only \(\Psi \) is still possible, because it misses just a single point. Pulling back, we find that
and we compute
Pick \(\chi \) such that \(1-\chi \circ \Psi \in C^\infty ((-{\textstyle \frac{1}{2}},{\textstyle \frac{1}{2}})\times (0,2\pi ))\) does not depend on \(\theta \in (0,2\pi )\), and is compactly supported in \((-{\textstyle \frac{1}{4}},{\textstyle \frac{1}{4}})\) and equal to 1 in a neighbourhood of \(r=0\). We tacitly extend \(\chi \) by one to all of \({\mathbb {R}}^2\). In that case, we have
and \(\ker \text {Op}(p)\) consists of v of the form
where \(u \in {\mathcal {D}}'({\mathbb {R}}/2\pi {\mathbb {Z}})\) is a distribution on the space of \(2\pi \)-periodic smooth functions. We could replace \(|\xi |^2_g\) in p by any integer power of \(|\xi |^2_g\) and still get a similar result, provided that we adjust the fractional power \(\frac{1}{2}\) in \(\Psi \) in accordance with this change. A similar technique can be applied to sums of powers of such multipliers too.
References
Atiyah, M.: Resolution of singularities and division of distributions. Commun. Pure Appl. Math. XXIII, 145–150 (1970)
Björk, J.E.: Rings of Differential Operators. North Holland, Amsterdam (1979)
Camus, B.: Fundamental solutions of homogeneous elliptic differential operators. Bull. Sci. Math. 130, 264–268 (2006)
Camus, B.: Fundamental solutions for a class of non-elliptic homogeneous differential operators. Bull. Sci. Math. 132, 486–499 (2008)
Grubb, G.: Distributions and Operators, vol. 252. Springer, Berlin (2009)
Hormander, L.: On the division of distributions by polynomials. Ark. Mat. 3, 555–568 (1958)
Hörmander, L.: The Analysis of Linear Partial Differential Operators I: Distribution Theory and Fourier Analysis, Classics in Mathematics. Springer, Berlin (2003)
Hörmander, L.: The Analysis of Linear Partial Differential Operators II: Differential Operators with Constant Coefficients, Classics in Mathematics. Springer, Berlin (2005)
Lojasiewiez, S.: Sur le probleme de division. Stud. Math. 18, 87–136 (1959)
Ortner, N., Wagner, P.: A survey on explicit representation formulae for fundamental solutions of linear partial differential operators. Acta Appl. Math. 47, 101–124 (1997)
Rabier, P.: \(l^p\) regularity of homogeneous elliptic differential operators with constant coefficients on \({\mathbb{R} }^n\). Rev. Mat. Iberoam. 34, 423–454 (2015)
Shubin, M.A.: Pseudodifferential Operators and Spectral Theory. Springer, Berlin (2001)
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewer. Their useful comments and suggestions helped to improve this paper.
Funding
Open access funding provided by Technical University of Denmark.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Winterrose, D.S. A structure theorem for fundamental solutions of analytic multipliers in \({\mathbb {R}}^n\). J. Pseudo-Differ. Oper. Appl. 15, 17 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11868-024-00586-2
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11868-024-00586-2