Lower semicontinuity of a class of multiple integrals below the growth exponent (Q1612792)

In this paper the authors prove a lower semicontinuity result for the functional \[ F(u)=\int _\Omega f(x,u(x),{\mathcal L}u(x))dx \] where \(u\in W^{1,p}(\Omega,\mathbb{R}^d)\) (\(\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^N\) an open set) and \({\mathcal L}\) is a linear differential operator of first order of the type \[ {\mathcal L}=\sum _{i=1}^N A_i\frac{\partial u}{\partial x_i}, \quad A_i\in \mathbb{R}^{d\times N}. \] The lower semicontinuity is proved for functions \(u_n\in W^{1,q}(\Omega,\mathbb{R}^d)\) weakly converging in\break \(W^{1,p}(\Omega,\mathbb{R}^d)\) to \(u\in W^{1,p}(\Omega,\mathbb{R}^d)\) with \(q\geq p> \max \{ 1,q(N-1)/N\}\) and \(f\) a quasiconvex function such that \(0\leq f(x,s,\xi)\leq c(1+|\xi|^q)\) and the property that for every \((x_0,s_0)\in \Omega \times \mathbb{R}^d\), \(\forall \varepsilon >0\), \(\exists \delta >0\) such that \(|x-x_0|,|s-s_0|<\delta\) and \(\xi \in \mathbb{R}^{N\times d}\) then \(f(x,s,\xi)\geq (1-\varepsilon)f(x_0,s_0,\xi)\). This result is a generalization of a result of \textit{I. Fonseca} and \textit{J. Malý} [Ann. Inst. Henri Poincaré, Anal. Non Linéaire 14, 309-338 (1997; Zbl 0868.49011)] given for \({\mathcal L}u=\nabla u\) and \(f(x,s,\xi)=f(\xi)\), and has applications when \({\mathcal L}u=({\mathcal P}v,{\mathcal Q}^*w)\), \(u=(v,w)\), with \({\mathcal P},{\mathcal Q}\) linear differential operators of first order with constant coefficients such that \(\text{Im}{\mathcal P}\subset \text{Ker}{\mathcal Q}\) and \(f=f(({\mathcal P}v,{\mathcal Q}^*w))\) is a convex function. This application is a generalization of the usual polyconvex functionals, where \({\mathcal P}u=\nabla u\) and \({\mathcal Q}u=\text{rot }u\).