Convex rearrangement: Equality cases in the Pólya-Szegö inequality (Q1890052)

A classical theorem of Pólya and Szegő states that for nonnegative functions \(u\) in \(W^{1,p}(\mathbb{R}^n)\) the \(L^p\)-norm of \(\nabla u\) does not increase under Schwarz symmetrization. In fact under suitable assumptions one can conclude that equality of \(\|\nabla u\|_p\) and \(\|\nabla u^*\|_p\) implies that the level sets of \(u\) must be concentric balls, so that \(u= u^*\) (modulo translation). In recent years there has been a number of papers for instance by Cianchi and Fusco in which this result was extended to more general functionals, but also more general ``balls''. In fact, if the Euclidean metric in \(\mathbb{R}^n\) is replaced by any convex norm, then the modulus of the gradient is measured in terms of the dual norm \(\|\cdot\|_0\) and all level sets of the rearranged functions are concentric and homothetic to \(\{x\in\mathbb{R}^n;\| x\|\leq 1\}\). In the paper under review the authors discuss the equality case for this and more general functionals. It should be mentioned that the special case of a strictly convex normwas also treated by \textit{Esposito} and \textit{Trombetti} in Nonlinear Anal., Theory Methods Appl. 56 A, No.1 , 43--62 (2004; Zbl 1038.26014)].