Smoothness of collapsed regions in a capillarity model for soap films (Q2070904)

In this paper, the authors consider generalized minimizers in the soap film capillarity model. They show that collapsed regions of generalized minimizers are smooth outside of singular sets of small Hausdorff dimension. Since generalized minimizers converge to Plateau's type surfaces in the vanishing volume limit, the fact that, contrary to what happens in the limit Plateau's surfaces, collapsed regions cannot exhibit \(Y\)-points and \(T\)-points, gives hints that singularities of the limit Plateau's surfaces should always be ``wetted'' by the bulky regions of the approximating generalized minimizers. The formulation of the capillarity model starts from the model for soap films hanging from a wire frame: the wire frame is a compact set \(W\subset \mathbb{R}^{n+1}\), \(n\ge 1\), and the region of space accessible to soap films is the open set \[ \Omega= \mathbb{R}^{n+1} \setminus W, \] i.e. everywhere except the wire frame. A ``spanning class'' in \(\Omega\) is a family \(\mathcal{C} \) of smooth embedding which is homotopically closed in \(\Omega\). The Plateau's problem can be thus formulated by setting \[ \ell =\inf \{ \mathcal{H}^n(S):S\in \mathcal{S} \}, \] where \[\mathcal{S} =\{ S\subset \Omega : S \text{ is relatively closed and } \mathcal{C}-\text{spanning }W \}. \] Minimizers \(S\) of \(\ell\) exist for all \(\ell<\infty\). In capillarity theory, regions \(E\) occupied by a liquid at equilibrium inside a container can be described by minimizing the area \(\mathcal{H}^n(\partial E\cap \Omega )\) of the boundary of \(E\) lying inside the container, with fixed \(|E|\). By imposing a further \(\mathcal{C}\)-spanning requirement on \(\partial E\cap \Omega\), the authors formulate the ``soap film capillarity problem'' by setting \[\psi (\varepsilon) =\inf \{ \mathcal{H}^n(\partial E\cap \Omega):E\in \mathcal{E}, |E|=\varepsilon, \partial E\cap \Omega \text{ is } \mathcal{C}-\text{spanning} \},\] where \[\mathcal{E} =\{E\subset\Omega: E \text{ is an open set and } \partial E\text{ is } \mathcal{H}^n-\text{rectifiable} \}. \] Since for \(\varepsilon>0\), minimizers of \(\psi(\varepsilon)\) might find it advantageous to collapse onto lower dimensional sets, to describe the limit of minimizing sets the following space was introduced by the authors: \begin{align*} \mathcal{K} & = \{ (K,E): E\subset \Omega \text{ is open with } \Omega\cap \text{cl}(\partial^*E) = \Omega\cap \partial E \subset K, K\in \mathcal{S} \text{ and } K \text{ is } \mathcal{H}^n-\text{rectifiable}. \} \end{align*} The limit energy computed to be \[ \mathcal{F}(K,E) = \mathcal{H}^n( \Omega\cap \partial^* E )+ 2 \mathcal{H}^n( K\setminus \partial^* E )\qquad (K,E) \in \mathcal{K}.\] The authors' main result shows a sharp regularity for the exterior collapsed region: in the rather general case \(\ell<\infty\), and \(\Omega\) smooth, if \((K,E)\) is a minimizer of \(\psi(\varepsilon)\), then there exists a closed \(\Sigma\subset K \setminus \text{cl}(E)\) such that \(K \setminus(\Sigma\cup \text{cl}(E))\) is a smooth minimal hypersurface, and \begin{itemize} \item[1.] \(\Sigma=\emptyset \text{ if } 1\le n\le 6,\) \item[2.] \(\Sigma\) is locally finite in \(\Omega\setminus \text{cl}(E)\) for \(n=7\), \item[3.] \(\Sigma\) is countably \((n-7)\)-rectifiable for \(n\ge 8\). \end{itemize}