On Morrey and BMO regularity for gradients of minima of certain non-differentiable functionals (Q2327740)

Let \(\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^n\) (\(n\geq 3\)) be a bounded open set. The authors study the regularity of the local minima of the functional \[\mathcal{F}(u,\Omega)=\int_\Omega (\langle A(x)Du,Du\rangle+g(x,u,Du))dx.\] Here, \(A:\Omega\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{nN}\) \((N1)\) is a symmetric matrix of functions and \(g:\Omega \times \mathbb{R}^n\times \mathbb{R}^{nN}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}\) is a Carathéodory function. A local minimum of \(\mathcal{F}\) is meant as a function \(u\in W_{\text{loc}}^{1,2}(\Omega, \mathbb{R}^N)\) such that \(\mathcal{F}(u,\operatorname{supp} \varphi)\leq \mathcal{F}(u+\varphi,\operatorname{supp} \varphi)\), for each \(\varphi \in W^{1,2}(\Omega,\mathbb{R}^N)\), with \(\operatorname{supp}\varphi \Subset \Omega\). The first regularity result proved in this paper states that, if \(u\in W^{1,2}(\Omega,\mathbb{R}^N)\) is a local minimum of \(\mathcal{F}\), then \(Du\) belongs to the Morrey space \(L_{\text{loc}}^{2,n(1-\frac{1}{p})}(\Omega,\mathbb{R}^{nN})\), with \(1\)\(p\)\(n\), (resp. \(Du \in L_{\text{loc}}^{1,\lambda}(\Omega,\mathbb{R}^{nN})\), for each \(\lambda \in (1,n)\)), provided that the following conditions hold: \(1)\) \ \(A\) is continuous in \(\overline{\Omega}\) and satisfies the following Legendre-Hadamard condition: there exists \(\nu0\) such that \[A_{ij}^{\alpha\beta}(x)\xi_{\alpha}\xi_{\beta}\eta^{i}\eta^{j}\geq \nu |\xi|^2|\eta|^2, \ \ \text{for all} \ \ x\in \Omega, \xi\in \mathbb{R}^n, \eta \in \mathbb{R}^N,\] \(2)\) the function \(g\) satisfies the growth condition \[ |g(x,u,z)|\leq f(x)+M\biggl(|u|^\delta +\frac{|z^2|}{\log^s(e+|z|^2)}\biggr), \ \ \text{for all} \ \ x\in \Omega, \ \ u\in \mathbb{R}^N, z\in \mathbb{R}^{nN}, \] for some \(f\in L^p(\Omega)\) (resp. \(f\in L^\infty(\Omega)\)), \(M\geq 0\), \(\delta\in [0,\frac{2n}{n-2})\), and \(s\in (0,1]\). As \(\mathcal{F}\) is, in general, a non differentiable functional, the Euler-Lagrange system cannot be used to derive the regularity of \(u\). Thus, the proof use a different approach based on the linearization technique around points. The above result is then applied to derive the following theorem which is the main regularity result of the paper: for \(q\in [1,\infty)\) and \(\lambda \in [0,n+q]\), consider the Campanato space \(\mathcal{L}^{q,\lambda}(\Omega,\mathbb{R}^{nN})\). Assume that \(A\) is Hölder continuous in \(\overline{\Omega}\) and satisfies the Legendre-Hadamard condition, and that \(g\) satisfies the conditions \[ |g(x,u,z_1)-g(y,v,z_2)|\leq |f(x)-f(y)|+M\biggl((|u|+|v|)^\delta +\frac{|z_1-z_2|^2}{\log^s(e+|z_1-z_2|^2)}\biggr), \] and \[ g(x,0,0)\in \mathcal{L}^{1,n}(\Omega,\mathbb{R}^{nN}) \] for all \(u\in \mathbb{R}^N\), \(z_1,z_2\in \mathbb{R}^{nN}\), and for a.e. \(x\in\ \Omega\), where \(f\in \mathcal{L}^{1,n}(\Omega)\) and \(M,\delta,s\) are as above. Then, \(Du \in \mathcal{L}_{\text{loc}}^{2,n}(\Omega,\mathbb{R}^{nN})\). Finally, the first regularity result is extended to the case of discontinuous coefficients \(A\in L^\infty \cap VMO(\Omega,\mathbb{R}^{nN})\) by replacing the Legendre-Hadamard condition with the strong ellipticity condition and assuming the growth condition \[ |g(x,u,z)|\leq f(x)+M\biggl(\frac{|z^2|}{\log^s(e+|z|^2)}\biggr), \ \ \text{for all} \ \ x\in \Omega, \ \ u\in \mathbb{R}^N, z\in \mathbb{R}^{nN}, \] for some \(f\in L^p(\Omega)\), with \(2\)\(p\)\(\infty\) (resp. \(p=\infty\)), \(M\geq 0\), and \(s\in (0,1]\). Under this assumptions, it is proved that \(Du\in L_{\text{loc}}^{2,n(1-\frac{2}{p})}(\Omega,\mathbb{R}^{nN})\) (resp. \(Du\in L_{\text{loc}}^{2,\lambda}(\Omega,\mathbb{R}^{nN})\), for each \(\lambda\in[0, n)\)).