Some oscillation properties of selfadjoint elliptic equations

Abstract

In this paper a method is given for generalizing to partial differential equations known nonoscillation theorems for second order ordinary differential equations. As illustrations, two theorems of Hille (one of integral type and one of limit type) are generalized to obtain nonoscillation criteria for second order linear elliptic differential equations on unbounded domains <inline-formula content-type="math/mathml"> <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" alttext="upper G"> <mml:semantics> <mml:mi>G</mml:mi> <mml:annotation encoding="application/x-tex">G</mml:annotation> </mml:semantics> </mml:math> </inline-formula> in <inline-formula content-type="math/mathml"> <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" alttext="n"> <mml:semantics> <mml:mi>n</mml:mi> <mml:annotation encoding="application/x-tex">n</mml:annotation> </mml:semantics> </mml:math> </inline-formula> -dimensional Euclidean space <inline-formula content-type="math/mathml"> <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" alttext="upper R Superscript n"> <mml:semantics> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:msup> <mml:mi>R</mml:mi> <mml:mi>n</mml:mi> </mml:msup> </mml:mrow> <mml:annotation encoding="application/x-tex">{R^n}</mml:annotation> </mml:semantics> </mml:math> </inline-formula> .