Strong unique continuation property for elliptic systems of normal type in two independent variables

Abstract

We give a result on strong unique continuation property for a certain elliptic system of first order in the two dimensional space. Two coefficient matrices are normal and commutative with each other. We assume, further, that their components are Hölder continuous and have continuous first order derivatives except at one point. Without any regularity assumptions on the eigenvalues, we can show the strong unique continuation property for a class of such systems under certain quantitative conditions on the first order derivatives. This result gives an improvement of a work by G. N. Hile and M. H. Protter in a special case.