Embeddedness of liquid-vapour interfaces in stable equilibrium

DOI10.4171/IFB/490MaRDI QIDQ6186469zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Costante Bellettini

Publication date 2 February 2024

Published in Interfaces and Free Boundaries (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.12198

zbMATH Keywords

Caccioppoloi setcapillary modelliquid-vapour interfacemean curvature

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Quasilinear elliptic equations (35J62) Variational problems in a geometric measure-theoretic setting (49Q20) Minimal surfaces in differential geometry, surfaces with prescribed mean curvature (53A10)

Abstract: We consider a classical (capillary) model for a one-phase liquid in equilibrium. The liquid (e.g. water) is subject to a volume constraint, it does not mix with the surrounding vapour (e.g. air), it may come into contact with solid supports (e.g. a container), and is subject to the action of an analytic potential field (e.g. gravity). The region occupied by the liquid is described as a set of locally finite perimeter (Caccioppoli set) in $mathbb{R}^3$; no a priori regularity assumption is made on its boundary. The (twofold) scope in this note is to propose a weakest possible set of mathematical assumptions that sensibly describe a condition of stable equilibrium for the liquid-vapour interface (the capillary surface), and to infer from those that this interface is a smoothly embedded analytic surface. (The liquid-solid-vapour junction, or free boundary, can be present but is not analysed here.) The result relies fundamentally on the recent varifold regularity theory developed by Wickramasekera and the author, and on the identification of a suitable formulation of the stability condition.

Review text

Let \(\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^3\) be an open bounded set and let \(E\subset \mathbb{R}^3\) be a Caccioppoli set (that is a set whose characteristic function \(\chi_C\) is of locally bounded variation) with finite perimeter \(\mathrm{Per}_\Omega(E)\) in \(\Omega\), where \[ \mathrm{Per}_\Omega(E)=\sup\left\{\int_E \mathrm{div}(T)\colon \ T\in C^1_c(\Omega,\mathbb{R}^3), \ \sup|T|\leq 1\right\}. \] Consider a constant-density, incompressible liquid occupying the region \(E\) in a container whose interior is given by the set \(\Omega\) and assume that the liquid is subject to a volume constraint, it does not mix with the surrounding vapour and it may come into contact with the container. Moreover, assume that the liquid is subjected to the action of an analytic potential field \(g\). In this paper, the regularity of the liquid-vapour interface away from the container is investigated. In particular, the author shows that if \(E\) is ``physically stationary and stable (in a sense which is made precise in the paper) with respect to the free energy \({\mathcal E}_\Omega(E)=\mathrm{Per}_\Omega(E)+\int_{E\cap\Omega}gd{\mathcal L}^3\) of \(E\) in \(\Omega\), for volume preserving deformations inside \(\Omega\), then any portion of the reduced boundary of \(E\) (the measure-theoretic notion of boundary for a Caccioppoli set) that does not touch the solid support of the container is a smoothly embedded analytic surface.

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Cited in

(1)

• Local minimizers of the anisotropic isoperimetric problem on closed manifolds

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