Averaging Effects and Their Applications to Fractional Elliptic and Parabolic Equations

The averaging effect is a distinctive property possessed by fractional operators. In recent years, it has emerged as a powerful tool in the study of qualitative properties of solutions to fractional elliptic and parabolic equations. In this article, we systematically summarize and prove various forms of the averaging effects for both fractional elliptic and parabolic equations, from the simplest one to the one under very relaxed conditions, including versions for antisymmetric functions. We then present examples to illustrate how to apply these effects to obtain radial symmetry and monotonicity for solutions in a unit ball and in a half space. In addition, we derive averaging effects for fractional Monge–Ampère operators and for fractional p-Laplacians, which will be potentially applied to obtain qualitative properties for solutions to equations involving these operators. Compared with the traditional approaches, methods based on the averaging effect require substantially weaker regularity assumptions and can even accommodate unbounded solutions.