A stationary heat conduction problem in low dimensional sets in \({\mathbb{R}}^N\) (Q2291735)

The authors use the variational approach to study the existence and uniqueness of weak solutions to a linear elliptic equation related to the problem of heat distribution in a conductor \(S\) in the ambient space \(\Omega\subset \mathbb R^N\). The conductor \(S\) is insulated at the boundary of \(\Omega\), the set \(\Omega\setminus S\) is neither conducting nor it contains any heat source, and the dimension of \(S\) is smaller than \(N\). Using the measure theoretic tools they follow the approach of [\textit{G. Bouchitté} et al., Calc. Var. Partial Differ. Equ. 5, No. 1, 37--54 (1997; Zbl 0934.49011]). Contrary to the previous approaches they do not assume a Poincaré-type inequality to hold globally on \(S\) and they consider the Neumann boundary condition.