One of the many meaningful equivalent norms on BMO uses a Carleson-measure condition on the gradient of the Poisson extension. This is closely related to the Dirichlet problem for the Laplacian in the upper half-space with boundary data in BMO. The Poisson semigroup provides the unique solution in appropriate classes, and it is bounded on BMO, that is, it propagates the space boundary space in the transversal direction. If the tangential Laplacian is replaced by a general elliptic operator in divergence form, boundedness of the Poisson semigroup on BMO can fail in any dimension n ≥ 3. Somewhat unexpectedly, its gradient persists to give rise to a Carleson measure with norm equivalent to the BMO-norm at the boundary in dimensions n = 3, 4 and hence a unique solution to the corresponding Dirichlet problem. In my talk, I will try to explain the broader context behind this phenomenon and why we still do not know if the result is sharp.
Based on joint work with (of course) Pascal. It is Chapter 18 of our book but you will not have to read the seventeen preceding chapters to follow.[-]