Sobolev homeomorphisms are dense in volume preserving automorphisms (Q1732312)

Lusin's theorem allows us to approximate measurable functions by continuous ones. Roughly speaking, in the paper under review, measurable and continuous are replaced: it is about approximating volume preserving homeomorphisms by volume preserving Sobolev homeomorphisms. The authors suggest that such a result could be useful in the treatment of dynamical properties in the Sobolev class. Let me be more precise about the main result in the paper. The underlying spaces are closed connected \(n\)-dimensional manifolds where \(n\geq 3\). The function \(g\) to approximate is a bijection such that \(g\) and \(g^{-1}\) are measurable and preserve the measure for all measurable sets. Furthermore, the authors assume that \(||g-\mathrm{Id}||_\infty<\varepsilon\) for a given \(\varepsilon>0\). Now, given \(1\leq p< n-1\) and any weak topology neighbourhood of \(g\), the authors show that there is a function \(f\) in this neighbourhood that is a volume preserving homeomorphism, continuous up to the boundary and in the Sobolev space \(W^{1,p}\) that is \(\varepsilon\)-close to the identity; that is, \[ ||f-g||_\infty+||D(f-g)||_p<\varepsilon. \] Furthermore, \(f\) is in \(W^{1,\infty}\). The authors also give a counterexample for the theorem in the case \(p>n\). The key result is a generalization of a perturbation result by \textit{J. C. Oxtoby} and \textit{S. M. Ulam} [Ann. Math. (2) 42, 874--920 (1941; Zbl 0063.06074)]. In the case of the paper under review, given two ``close'' sets having the same cardinality, the task is to find a measure preserving Sobolev homeomorphism between them. In the proof of the main result, these sets are chosen to be centers of dyadic cubes, and actually the approximation of permutations of dyadic cubes is studied.