New P\'olya-Szeg\"o-type inequalities and an alternative approach to comparison results for PDE's

We prove some P\'olya-Szeg\"o type inequalities which involve couples of functions and their rearrangements. Our inequalities reduce to the classical P\'olya-Szeg\"o principle when the two functions coincide. As an application, we give a different proof of a comparison result for solutions to Dirichlet boundary value problems for Laplacian equations proved by A. Alvino, G. Trombetti, J. I. Diaz and P. L. Lions.