Gradient variational problems in \(\mathbb{R}^2\) (Q2081390)

Given \(\mathcal{N}\subset \mathbb{R}^2\) a closed and simply connected set, and \(\sigma\colon \mathcal{N}\to \mathbb{R}\) a smooth and strictly convex function on the interior of \(\mathcal{N}\), and satisfies a local ellipticity condition, namely, its Hessian determinant is nonzero on the interior of \(\mathcal{N}\). The authors consider variational problems given in the general form \[ \min \int_\Omega \sigma(\nabla h)\,\mathrm{d}x\mathrm{d}y, \] where \(\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^2\), and the minimization runs among functions \(h\) such that \(\nabla h\in \mathcal{N}\) almost everywhere and such that they satisfy a boundary condition \(h_{\partial \Omega}=h_0\). This framework encompasses among others the Dirichlet energy (\(\sigma(\nabla h)=|\nabla h|^2\)) and the minimal surface equation (\(\sigma(\nabla h)=\sqrt{1+|\nabla h|^2}\)). Given a positive function \(\kappa\colon \mathbb{R}^2 \to \mathbb{R}\), any solution of the problem \(\mathrm{div}(\kappa \nabla u) = 0\) is called a \(\kappa\)-harmonic function. Their main result (cf. Theorem~3.2) states that graphs of solutions of the above variational problem are envelopes of \(\sqrt{\det \mathrm{Hess}(\sigma)}\)-harmonically moving planes in \(\mathbb{R}^3\). The paper is then complemented with some explicit examples.