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The original PDF assumes $u\ge 0$ at the beginning of this question; the TeX conversion omits that hypothesis. First replace a smooth nonnegative solution by $v=u+\epsilon >0$, which solves the same homogeneous divergence-form elliptic equation. For $w=v^{q/2}$, the chain rule gives the favorable termin the distributional sense. Thus $w$ is a weak subsolution. Testing its subsolution inequality with ${\zeta }^{2}w$ yields the same Caccioppoli inequality as before. More precisely, testing the equation for $v$ with ${\zeta }^2{v}^{q-1}$ givesIndeed the main term is at least $(q-1)\lambda \int {\zeta }^2{v}^{q-2}|\nabla v{|}^2$, and the cross term is bounded by twice $\Lambda$ times the square roots of this weighted gradient integral and $\int v^q|\nabla \zeta {|}^2$. Let $\epsilon \downarrow 0$ to obtain the stated power energy estimate.

Apply the fixed-domain Sobolev embedding theorem to $\zeta u^{q/2}$. The crucial constant stays uniform before taking the $2/q$ power:where $D_{\ell }\ge 1$ is independent of $q$. This is uniform power gain for elliptic solutions. The exponent is $q\alpha$, not the TeX conversion's $q^{\alpha }$. The PDF's weaker prefactor $C_{\ell }$ outside the $2/q$ power follows from this stronger estimate, but that weaker form alone cannot be iterated infinitely.

For completeness, the estimate also extends to nonnegative locally $H^1$ weak solutions without assuming they are already bounded. For $s\ge 0$ define $F_M(s)=s^{q/2}$ up to $M$ and continue it linearly with slope $(q/2)M^{q/2-1}$ above $M$; set ${\Psi }_M(s)={\int }_0^s{F}_M^{\prime }(r{)}^{2}dr$. Both have bounded derivatives for fixed $M$. Direct calculation gives ${\Psi }_M/F_M^{\prime }\le F_M$ and $F_M(s)\le (q/2)s^{q/2}$. Test the weak equation with ${\zeta }^2{\Psi }_M(u)$, using smooth approximations to these Sobolev chain rule functions if needed. The resulting weighted energy bound is $\int {\zeta }^2|\nabla F_M(u){|}^2\le 4R^2\int F_M(u{)}^2|\nabla \zeta {|}^2$. If $u\in L^q(B_{r_2})$, dominated convergence on the right and the Fatou lemma on the Sobolev left give the boxed gain as $M\to \infty$, with the same uniform constant. Starting with $q=2$, this justifies every subsequent iteration step.

For a nonnegative $H^1$ weak solution of a homogeneous divergence-form elliptic equation on $B_1\subset {\mathbb{R}}^{\ell }$, $\ell \ge 2$, with symmetric measurable $\lambda I\le A\le \Lambda I$, set $R=\Lambda /\lambda$ and $\alpha =1+1/\ell$. There is $D_{\ell }\ge 1$ independent of $q\ge 2$ such thatTest the equation with a cutoff times $u^{q-1}$, first regularized or truncated, to get $\int {\zeta }^2|\nabla u^{q/2}{|}^2\le [q/(q-1){]}^2{R}^2\int u^q|\nabla \zeta {|}^2$. Apply a fixed-domain Sobolev embedding theorem to $\zeta u^{q/2}$ and take the $2/q$ power. Keeping the constant inside that power is crucial for Moser iteration.