A symmetry problem in the calculus of variations (Q5920591)

The author considers minimizers for the functional \(J(u) = \int_\Omega (f(| Du| )-u)\,dx\) when \(u\in W_0^{1,1}(\Omega)\), where \(\Omega\) is a nonempty bounded and regular subset in \({\mathbb R}^n\), and \(s\in [0,\infty)\mapsto f(s)\) is a convex, nondecreasing, differentiable function. When \(f(s) = s^2/2\), it is well known that if the minimizer of \(J\) depends only on the distance from the boundary \(\partial \Omega\), then \(\Omega\) must be a ball. The author proves the same result for a general class of functions \(f\).