On sectoriality of degenerate elliptic operators

Abstract: Let $c_{kl} \in W^{1,\infty}(\Omega, \mathbb{C})$ for all $k,l \in {1, \ldots, d}$ and $\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^d$ be open with Lipschitz boundary. We consider the divergence form operator $ A_p = - \sum_{k,l=1}^d \partial_l (c_{kl} \, \partial_k) $ in $L_p(\Omega)$ when the coefficient matrix satisfies $(C(x) \, \xi, \xi) \in \Sigma_\theta$ for all $x \in \Omega$ and $\xi \in \mathbb{C}^d$, where $\Sigma_\theta$ be the sector with vertex 0 and semi-angle $\theta$ in the complex plane. We show that a sectorial estimate hold for $A_p$ for all $p$ in a suitable range. We then apply these estimates to prove that the closure of $-A_p$ generates a holomorphic semigroup under further assumptions on the coefficients. The contractivity and consistency properties of these holomorphic semigroups are also considered.