Singularities of the nodal set of segregated configurations (Q745580)

This study is motivated by the segregating behaviour, that is \(u_{i,\kappa} u_{j,\kappa} \to 0\) as \(\kappa \to + \infty\) (\(i\neq j\)), of uniformly bounded solutions to the singularly perturbed elliptic system \( -\Delta u_i=f_i(u_i)-\kappa u_i \sum_{j\neq i}g_{ij}(u_j),\) \(u_i\geq 0\), in an open, bounded smooth domain of \(\mathbb{R}^n\) (\(n\geq 2\)), where \(f_i\) are smooth with \(f_i(0)=0\), \(i=1,\dots,M\), and either \(g_{ij}(u)=\beta_{ij}u\) or \(g_{ij}(u)=\beta_{ij}u^2\), where in both cases \(\beta_{ij}=\beta_{ji}>0\). The first case with \(f_i(u)=u(a_i-b_iu)\), \(a_i,b_i>0\), corresponds to a Lotka-Volterra species in population ecology, while the second case with \(f_i(u)=\omega_i u^3-\lambda_i u\), \(\omega_i,\lambda_i>0\), arises in the Hatree-Fock theory of a mixture of Bose-Einstein condensates. Let \(u=(u_1,\dots,u_M)\) denote the limiting configuration. Then, \(u\) is Lipschitz continuous and it holds \(-\Delta u_i=f_i(u_i)\) in \(\{u_i>0\}\) (in the classical sense). Moreover, it is known that the nodal set \(\Gamma_u =\{x\in \Omega: u(x)=0\}\) can be expressed as the union \(\Gamma^* \cup S\) where \(\Gamma^*\), the regular set, is locally a \(C^{1,\alpha}\) smooth hypersurface and \(S\), the singular set, is a relatievely closed subset in \(\Omega\) of Hausdorff dimension less than \(n-2\). The focus of this study is on the structure of \(S\), in particular it is shown to be rectifiable. Their approach is based on blow-up analysis and various monotonicity formulas.