Existence and regularity of weak solutions to the prescribed mean curvature equation for a nonparametric surface (Q1596329)

Let \(\Omega \subset {\mathbb R}^2\) be a bounded domain and \(f \in C^2(\Omega)\) be given. The mean curvature, \(h\), of the nonparametric surface graphed by \(f\), \(X(u, v) = (u, v, f(u,v))\) is given by \[ (1 + f_v^2) f_{uu} + (1+f_u^2) f_{vv} - 2 f_u f_v f_{uv} = 2h(u, v, f) (1 + |\nabla f|^2)^{3/2}.\tag{1} \] The authors considered the quasilinear elliptic PDE (1) with Dirichlet boundary condition and proved the existence of weak solutions using variational method. More precisely, for given \(h\), the equation (1) is exactly the Euler-Lagrange equation of the following functional to \(h\) \[ J_h(f) = \int_\Omega \left((1+|\nabla f|^2)^{1/2} + H(u,v,f)\right) du dv. \] Here \(f \in H^1(\Omega), H(u,v,z) = \int_0^z 2 h(u,v,t) dt\), and \(H^1(\Omega)\) is the usual Sobolev space. The authors proved that under some condition on \(h\) and boundary data, the functional \(J_h\) has a global minimum in a convex subset of \(H^1(\Omega)\), which provides a weak solution for (1). They also showed a standard regularity theroem for the equation (1).