Regularity of random elliptic operators with degenerate coefficients and applications to stochastic homogenization

Abstract

We consider degenerate elliptic equations of second order in divergence form with a symmetric random coefficient field a. Extending the work of the first author, Fehrman, and Otto [Ann. Appl. Probab. 28 (2018), no. 3, 1379-1422], who established the large-scale regularity of a-harmonic functions in a degenerate situation, we provide stretched exponential moments for the minimal radius describing the minimal scale for this regularity. As an application to stochastic homogenization, we partially generalize results by Gloria, Neukamm, and Otto [Anal. PDE 14 (2021), no. 8, 2497-2537] on the growth of the corrector, the decay of its gradient, and a quantitative two-scale expansion to the degenerate setting. On a technical level, we demand the ensemble of coefficient fields to be stationary and subject to a spectral gap inequality, and we impose moment bounds on the coefficient field and its inverse. We also introduce the ellipticity radius, which encodes the minimal scale where these moments are close to their positive expectation value.