A new extension of Serrin's lower semicontinuity theorem (Q2015416)

Summary: We present a new extension of Serrin's lower semicontinuity theorem. We prove that the variational functional \(\int_\Omega f(x,u,u')dx\) defined on \(W^{1,1}_{loc}(\Omega)\) is lower semicontinuous with respect to the strong convergence in \(L^1_{loc}\), under the assumptions that the integrand \(f(x,s,\xi)\) is locally absolutely continuous with respect to the variable \(x\).