Fine level set structure of flat isometric immersions (Q717457)

Consider a flat isometric immersion \(u: S \to \mathbb{R}^3\) of class \(C^1\), where \(S\) is a bounded Lipschitz domain in \(\mathbb{R}^2\), the gradient \(f=\nabla u\), and the set of local constancy for \(f\), \(C_{f}=\{x\in S, f \text{ is \;constant \;in \;a \;neighborhood \;of \;x} \}\). It is known that if \(f\) takes values in a set of zero area, then it has the so-called \((L)\) property, which says that \(f\) is developable in the following sense: (L): for every \(x\in S\setminus C_f\), \(\exists [x]\subset S\), a line segment whose endpoints are contained in \(\partial S\) and \(f\) is constant on \([x]\). In this paper, the author studies continuous maps \(f: S \to \mathbb{R}^p\), for arbitrary \(p\in \mathbb{N}\), which satisfy condition \((L)\). In the first part, he describes the geometry of the set \(C_f\), and in the second part the set \(S\setminus C_f\) containing the nondegenerate level sets of \(f\). Two constructive results complete the geometric study about the level set structure of isometric immersions, presented in the paper. In Section 4, Theorem 3 states that every continuous mapping satisfying condition \((L)\) can be approximated by ``finitely developable'' mappings (maps for which \(C_f\) and its complement have finitely many connected components). In Section 6, Theorem 4 shows that the domain \(S\) can be decomposed into a finite number of subdomains compatible with \(f\) and subdomains (possible infinitely many) localized near \(\partial S\).