Boundary Layers on Sobolev-Besov Spaces and Poisson's Equation for the Laplacian in Lipschitz Domains

Abstract

We study inhomogeneous boundary value problems for the Laplacian in arbitrary Lipschitz domains with data in Sobolev-Besov spaces. As such, this is a natural continuation of work in [Jerison and Kenig,J. Funct. Anal.(1995), 16-219] where the inhomogeneous Dirichlet problem is treated via harmonic measure techniques. The novelty of our approach resides in the systematic use of boundary integral methods. In this regard, the key results are establishing the invertibility of the classical layer potential operators on scales of Sobolev-Besov spaces on Lipschitz boundaries for optimal ranges of indices. Applications toLp-based Helmholtz type decompositions of vector fields in Lipschitz domains are also presented. © 1998 Academic Press.