Sobolev homeomorphic extensions onto John domains (Q2197802)

The classical Schöenflies theorem states that every homeomorphism from the unit circle onto a Jordan curve \(\partial Y\) in the plane extends to a homeomorphism from the closed unit disk onto \(\overline{Y}\). The authors study the problem of finding such extensions lying in a Sobolev space \(W^{1,p}\). If \(\partial Y\) is rectifiable, then for any homeomorphism from the unit circle onto \(\partial Y\) and for \(p=1\) there exists such an extension by work of the second and the third author [``Sobolev homeomorphic extensions'', J. Eur. Math. Soc. 23, No. 12, 4065--4089 (2021), \url{doi:10.4171/jems/1099}]. In the current paper, the authors prove that if \(\partial Y\) is a quasicircle, then the same result is true for all \(1\leq p<2\). The argument generalizes to John disks; these are also known as one-sided quasidisks, allowing for inward cusps but not outward ones. The proof relies on an extension result for homeomorphisms of the unit circle, which provides a locally Lipschitz homeomorphic extension to the unit disk with finite weighted Sobolev energy. The precise statement is as follows. Let \(1\leq p<2\) and \(p\beta<1\). Then every homeomorphism \(h\) of the unit circle has a locally Lipschitz extension to a homeomorphism of the unit disk \(\mathbb{D}\) such that \[ \int_{\mathbb{D}} \frac{|Dh|^p}{(1-|h|)^{p\beta}}<\infty. \] Then this result is transported to quasidisks using the global Hölder continuity of quasiconformal maps from the unit disk onto a quasidisk, giving the proof of the main theorem.