Annular rearrangements, incompressible axi-symmetric whirls and \(L^1\)-local minimisers of the distortion energy (Q1705175)

Let \(X\) be a rotationally symmetric annular domain of the Euclidean space \({\mathbb R}^n\). The main purpose of the paper under review is to study the symmetric minimisers and critical points of energy functionals of the type \(u\mapsto\int_{X}|\nabla u|^2/|u|^2dx\) over the class of weakly differentiable incompressible mappings \(u:X\rightarrow {\mathbb R}^n\). The authors also establish that only in even dimensions there are infinitely many nontrivial rotationally symmetric critical points. The arguments combine analytic, variational and topological methods, including annular rearrangements, \(L^1\)-local minimisers and homotopy theory.