Absence of Lavrentiev gap for non-autonomous functionals with \((p,q)\)-growth (Q2417203)

Variational functionals of the form $\int_{\Omega} f(x,Du(x))dx$, where $u$ maps from the open bounded set $\Omega\subseteq \mathbb{R}^N$ to $\mathbb{R}^N$ are considered. It is shown that under some hypotheses on the density $f(\cdot, \cdot)$ the corresponding Lavrentiev gap vanishes. Several functions that satisfy these assumptions are mentioned as well.