Relaxation of a quadratic functional defined by a nonnegative unbounded matrix (Q1300249)

The author studies the relaxation \(\overline F\) of the functional \[ F(u)=\int_\Omega A\nabla u\nabla u dx, \] where \(\Omega\) is an open and bounded subset of \(\mathbb{R}^d\) and \(A\) is a measurable function of \(\Omega\) with values in the nonnegative symmetric matrices. A characterization of \(\overline F\) in terms of an auxiliary space is established to prove that \(\overline F\) admits an integral representation of the form \[ \overline F= \int_\Omega \sqrt AP\sqrt A\nabla u\nabla u dx, \] where \(P\) is a suitable projection. In the last two sections the one-dimensional case is considered. In this case it is possible to characterize \(P\) completely. Finally it is shown that the assumptions on \(A\) of the previous sections are fulfilled in the one dimensional case if \(A\) is finite almost everywhere, but that the same result does not hold for higher dimensions.