The Newton polygon and elliptic problems with parameter

R. Denk, R. Mennicken, and L. Volevich

Abstract. In the study of the resolvent of a scalar elliptic operator, say, on a manifold  without boundary there is a well-known Agmon-Agranovich-Vishik condition of ellipticity with parameter which guarantees the existence of a ray of minimal growth of  the  resolvent.  The  paper  is  devoted   to   the investigation of the same problem in the case of systems which are elliptic in the sense of Douglis-Nirenberg.  We look for algebraic  conditions on the  symbol  providing  the  existence of the resolvent set containing a ray on the complex plane. We approach the problem using the Newton polyhedron method. The idea of the method is to study simultaneously all the quasihomogeneous parts of the system obtained by assigning to the  spectral parameter various weights, defined by the corresponding Newton polygon. On this way several equivalent necessary and sufficient conditions on the symbol of the system guaranteeing the existence and  sharp estimates for the resolvent  are found. One of the equivalent conditions can be formulated in the following form: all the upper left minors of the symbol satisfy ellipticity conditions. This subclass of systems elliptic in the sense of Douglis-Nirenberg was introduced by A. Kozhevnikov.

Math. Nachr. 192 (1998), 125-157.

The paper is available here: pdf