On the homogenization of noncoercive variational problems (Q1280072)

The paper concerns homogenization problems in periodically perforated domains which can be formulated as variational problems of the form: \[ m_{\varepsilon} = \inf_{u \in W^{1,p}(\Omega)} \int_{\Omega}a( {\varepsilon}^{-1}x)(| \nabla u| ^p + | u - g| ^p) dx, \] where \(\Omega\) is bounded Lipschitz domain in \({\mathbb R}^N\) and \(g \in L^p( \Omega)\). The authors admit the assumptions that the function \(a(x_1,\dots,x_N)\) is 1-periodic in each variable, lower semicontinuous, satisfies the inequality \(0 \leq a(x) \leq 1\) and the set \(F = \{x \in {\mathbb R}^N: a(x) > 0 \}\) is connected. Under these assumptions they find the form of the homogenized problem (its Lagrangian is already coercive) and they prove the convergence of energies; i.e., the minimal values converge to minimal value of the limit functional \[ m_{\varepsilon} \longrightarrow m_0, \quad \text{as} \quad \varepsilon \rightarrow 0, \] and similarly we have convergence of their minimizers \[ \lim_{{\varepsilon} \rightarrow 0}\int_{\Omega}a_{\varepsilon}| u^{\varepsilon} - u^0| ^p \;dx = 0 . \] The results are obtained by means of \(\Gamma\)-convergence techniques.