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 uniformly $C^{2}$ boundary. We consider the divergence form operator $A_p = - \sum \nolimits _{k,l=1}^{d} \partial _l (c_{kl} \partial _k)$ 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 holds 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.

Let $w$ be either in the Muckenhoupt class of ${{A}_{2}}\left( {{\mathbb{R}}^{n}} \right)$ weights or in the class of $QC\left( {{\mathbb{R}}^{n}} \right)$ weights, and let ${{L}_{w}}\,:=\,-{{w}^{-1}}\,\text{div}\left( A\nabla \right)$ be the degenerate elliptic operator on the Euclidean space ${{\mathbb{R}}^{n}}$, $n\,\ge \,2$. In this article, the authors establish the non-tangential maximal function characterization of the Hardy space $H_{{{L}_{w}}}^{p}\,\left( {{\mathbb{R}}^{n}} \right)$ associated with ${{L}_{w}}$ for $p\,\in \,(0,\,1]$, and when $p\,\in \,(\frac{n}{n+1},\,1]$ and $w\,\in \,{{A}_{{{q}_{0}}}}\left( {{\mathbb{R}}^{n}} \right)$ with ${{q}_{0}}\,\in \,[1,\,\frac{p(n+1)}{n})$, the authors prove that the associated Riesz transform $\nabla L_{w}^{-1/2}$ is bounded from $H_{{{L}_{w}}}^{p}\,\left( {{\mathbb{R}}^{n}} \right)$ to the weighted classical Hardy space $H_{w}^{p}\left( {{\mathbb{R}}^{n}} \right)$.

Let S be a sub-Markovian semigroup on L2(ℝd) generated by a self-adjoint, second-order, divergence-form, elliptic operator H with W1,∞(ℝd) coefficients ckl, and let Ω be an open subset of ℝd. We prove that if either C∞c(ℝd) is a core of the semigroup generator of the consistent semigroup on Lp(ℝd) for some p∈[1,∞]  or Ω has a locally Lipschitz boundary, then S leaves L2 (Ω) invariant if and only if it is invariant under the flows generated by the vector fields ∑ dl=1ckl∂l for all k. Further, for all p∈[1,2] we derive sufficient conditions on the coefficients for the core property to be satisfied. Then by combination of these results we obtain various examples of invariance in terms of boundary degeneracy both for Lipschitz domains and domains with fractal boundaries.