Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 May 2009
Let D be a domain in Euclidean space of d dimensions and K a compact subset of D. The well known Harnack inequality assures the existence of a positive constant A depending only on D and K such that (l/A)u(x)<u(y)<Au(x) for all x and y in K and all positive harmonic functions u on D. In this we obtain a global integral version of this inequality under geometrical conditions on the domain. The result is the following: suppose D is a Lipschitz domain satisfying the uniform exterior sphere condition—stated in Section 2. If u is harmonic in D with continuous boundary data f then
where ds is the d — 1 dimensional Hausdorff measure on the boundary ժD. A large class of domains satisfy this condition. Examples are C2-domains, convex domains, etc.