The maximum principles and symmetry results for viscosity solutions of fully nonlinear equations

This paper is concerned about maximum principles and radial symmetry for viscosity solutions of fully nonlinear partial differential equations. We obtain the radial symmetry and monotonicity properties for nonnegative viscosity solutions ofequation(0.1)F(D2u)+up=0in Rn under the asymptotic decay rate u=o(|x|−2p−1) at infinity, where p>1p>1 (Theorem 1, Corollary 1). As a consequence of our symmetry results, we obtain the nonexistence of any nontrivial and nonnegative solutions when F is the Pucci extremal operators ( Corollary 2). Our symmetry and monotonicity results also apply to Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman or Isaacs equations. A new maximum principle for viscosity solutions to fully nonlinear elliptic equations is established (Theorem 2). As a result, different forms of maximum principles on bounded and unbounded domains are obtained. Radial symmetry, monotonicity and the corresponding maximum principle for fully nonlinear elliptic equations in a punctured ball are shown (Theorem 3). We also investigate the radial symmetry for viscosity solutions of fully nonlinear parabolic partial differential equations (Theorem 4).