A stability result for nonlinear Neumann problems under boundary variations (Q1408902)

The authors consider a stability problem for the nonlinear elliptic systems with the Neumann boundary conditions: \[ \begin{cases} -\text{*div}a( x,\nabla u) +b( x,u) =0 &\text{ in } \Omega,\\ a( x,\nabla u) \cdot\nu=0 &\text{ on } \partial\Omega, \end{cases} \] \[ \begin{cases} -\text{*div}a( x,\nabla u) =0 &\text{ in } \Omega,\\ a( x,\nabla u) \cdot\nu=0 &\text{ on } \partial\Omega, \end{cases} \] where \(\Omega\subseteq\mathbb{R}^{2}\) is an arbitrary set, \(\nu\) denotes the outward unit normal to \(\partial\Omega;\) and \(a:\mathbb{R}^{2}\times \mathbb{R}^{2}\to\mathbb{R}^{2}\) and \(b:\mathbb{R}^{2}\times \mathbb{R}\to\mathbb{R}^{2}\) are Carathéodory functions that satisfy certain growth conditions. The set \(\Omega\) is said to be stable for the Neumann problems (1) along the sequence \(( \Omega_{h}) \) iff \(( u_{h}1_{\Omega_{h} }) \) converges to \(u1_{\Omega}\) strongly in \(L^{p}( \mathbb{R}^{2},\mathbb{R}) \) and \(( \nabla u_{h}1_{\Omega_{h} }) \) converges to \(\nabla u1_{\Omega}\) strongly in \(L^{p}( \mathbb{R}^{2},\mathbb{R}^{2}) \) where \(1_{\Omega}\) denotes the characteristic function of \(\Omega.\) The main result of the paper is the following {Theorem}. Let \(\Omega_{h}\) and \(\Omega\) be open subsets of \(\mathbb{R}^{2}.\) Then \(\Omega\) is stable for the Neumann problems (1) along the sequence \(( \Omega_{h}) \) iff \(( X_{\Omega_{h}}) \) converges to \(X_{\Omega}\) in the sense of Mosco, where \[ X_{\Omega}:=\{ ( u1_{\Omega},\nabla u1_{\Omega}) :u\in W^{1,p}( \Omega) \} . \] Similar theorems hold for (2) and for the problem with the Dirichlet boundary data. The research methods and results of the paper are interesting to apply to the optimization and numerical approximation of the systems of the form (1) and (2).