A new approach to interior regularity of elliptic systems with quadratic Jacobian structure in dimension two (Q2518881)

The authors are interested to the following PDE: \(-\triangle u^i=\sum_{1\leq j\leq m}\Omega^i_j\cdot\nabla u^j\), \(i=1,2,\dots, m\), on an open set \(D\subset{\mathbb R}^2\), \(\Omega^i_j=\sum_{1\leq k\leq m}h^i_{jk}\nabla^{\bot}v^k\), with \((h^i_{jk})_{1\leq i\leq m}\in L^2\bigcap W^{1,2}(D,{\mathbb R}^m)\), \(j,k=1,\cdots,m\), \(v\in W^{1,2}(D,{\mathbb R}^m)\). They prove that if \(u\in W^{1,2}(D,{\mathbb R}^m)\) is a solution of the system, then \(u\) is locally Hölder continuous. This result generalizes previous one by Riviére that, instead, required \(\Omega^i_j\) skewsymmetric in the indexes. (This solved a conjecture of Heinz about regularity of solutions to the prescribed bounded mean curvature equation and a conjecture of Hildebrandt about regularity of all critical points of continuously differentiable elliptic conformally invariant Lagrangians in dimension two.) Some further results as by-products are obtained too.