Free boundary regularity for almost-minimizers (Q2421266)

The authors of this work studied the free boundary regularity for almost minimizers of the Alt-Caffarelli type of functionals. The main focus of the work was to gain more insights on the size and the structure of the free boundaries for almost minimizers, and the authors proved that the free boundary is uniformly rectifiable by using tools from potential theory and geometric measure theory. The authors studied the properties of two sets, \(\Gamma^{\pm}\), for almost minimizers of the considered functional \(J(u)\). First, the authors prove that the positivity set associated with the problem is a locally non-tangentially accessible (NTA) domain by using a compactness argument and proceeded to construct local subharmonic competitors which are the main tools used in the subsequent results. Next, the harmonic measure on \(\Gamma^+\) is shown to be Ahlfors-regular and the consequence of this result is that \(\Gamma^+\) is uniformly rectifiable. A monotonicity formula is studied next and ``almost monotonicity'' for almost-minimizers is proven. As a consequence of the monotonicity formula, the authors were able to measure the ``closeness'' of an almost minimizers to a half-plane solution by the value of the monotone quantity at small scales. Arguments on ``closeness'' eventually lead to the proof of the regularity of the free boundary.