Regularity for multi-phase variational problems (Q2415287)

The paper deals with the regularity for the local minimizers of integral multi-phase energy: \[ I(w)= \int_{\Omega} |Dw|^p + a(x)|Dw|^q + b(x)|Dw|^s dx, \] with Hölder continuous coefficients i.e. \[ a \in C^{0,\alpha},\quad b \in C^{0,\beta}, \quad a, b \geq 0,\quad \alpha, \beta \in(0, 1]. \] Under the following sharp assumptions relating the exponents \(p, q\) and \(p, s\): \[ \frac{q}{p} \leq 1+\frac{\alpha}{n},\quad \frac{s}{p} \leq 1+\frac{\beta}{n}, \] the authors show the \(C^{1,\nu}\)-regularity of the local minimizers. It is interesting to remark that the previous conditions are sharp in view of counterexample. Moreover, the same techniques allow to prove regularity results for functionals with a large numbers of phases.