Quantitative nonlinear homogenization: Control of oscillations

Quantitative stochastic homogenization of linear elliptic operators is by now well-understood. In this contribution we move forward to the nonlinear setting of monotone operators with p-growth. This first work is dedicated to a quantitative two-scale expansion result. Fluctuations will be addressed in companion articles. By treating the range of exponents 2≤p<∞ in dimensions d≤3, we are able to consider genuinely nonlinear elliptic equations and systems such as −∇⋅A(x)(1+|∇u|p−2)∇u=f (with A random, non-necessarily symmetric) for the first time. When going from p=2 to p>2, the main difficulty is to analyze the associated linearized operator, whose coefficients are degenerate, unbounded, and depend on the random input A via the solution of a nonlinear equation. One of our main achievements is the control of this intricate nonlinear dependence, leading to annealed Meyers' estimates for the linearized operator, which are key to the quantitative two-scale expansion result.