Existence and regularity for higher-dimensional \(H\)-systems (Q1975994)

This paper addresses the existence and regularity of solutions of the degenerate nonlinear elliptic systems known as \(H\)-systems. Precisely given a real function \(H\) defined on a subset of \(\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\), the associate \(H\)-systems on a subdomain \(B\) of \(\mathbb{R}^n\), (the chosen subdomain \(B\) is the unit ball) is given by \[ D_{x_i}(|D_u|^{n-2}D_{x_i}u)=\sqrt{u^n}(H\circ u)u_{x_i}\times \dots\times u_{x_n}\tag{1} \] for a mapping \(u : B\to\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\). Here, the cross product \(w_{x_i}\times \dots\times w_{x_n}:\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\oplus\cdots\oplus \mathbb{R}^{n+1}\to\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\) is defined by the property that \(w\cdot w_1\times \dots \times w_n= \text{det }w\) for all vectors \(w\in \mathbb{R}^{n+1}\), where \(w\) denotes the \((n + 1)\times (n+1)\) matrix whose first row is \((w^1_1\dots w^{n+1}_1)\) and whose \(j\)th row is \(\left(w^1_{j-1}\dots w_{j-1}^{n+1}\right)\), \(2\leq j\leq n+1\). Then the authors consider the Dirichlet boundary condition \[ u|_{\partial B} =\varphi\tag{2} \] for a suitably regular prescribed \(\varphi\). Denote \({\mathcal D}(H,\varphi)\) the Dirichlet problem (1)--(2) associated to \(H\) and \(\varphi\). The authors analyze \({\mathcal D}(H,\varphi)\) in dimension \(n \geq 3\) by using a variational formulation of the problem in the Sobolev space \(W^{1,n}(B, \mathbb{R}^{n+1})\) in order to realize the solutions of \({\mathcal D}(H,\varphi)\) as minimizers of an energy functional in an appropriate subclass of \(W^{1,n}(B,\mathbb{R}^{n+1})\). The used technique needed the introduction of a subtile notion of \(H\)-volume and the control of \(H\)-volume by the Dirichlet integral to get an estimate of how much of the volume and surface area can be lost under passage to the weak limit in the chosen subclass. Once this is accomplished the authors prove existence results for weak solutions of \({\mathcal D}(H,\varphi)\) under various assumptions on \(\varphi\) and \(H\) (including \(H\) constant). Finally under additional conditions on \(H\) and its domain of definition, the authors prove that every weak solution is Hölder continuous inside \(B\) and that \(u\in C^0(\overline{B},\mathbb{R}^{n+1})\) if \(u|_{\partial B}\in C^0(\partial B,\mathbb{R}^{n+1}).\)