New regularity theorems for non-autonomous variational integrals with \((p,q)\)-growth (Q2428588)

The paper deals with the regularity of minimizers to an integral functional \[ J(v,\Omega)= \int F(x,Dv) \, dx, \] with the energy density \(F\) satisfying the following anisotropic \(p-q\) growth condition: \[ C_1|Z|^p -C_2 \leq F(x,Z) \leq C_3 |Z|^q -C_4, \quad Z \in R^{nN}, \,\, x \in \Omega. \] The best known sufficient bound for regularity when \(F=F(Z)\) is \(q<\frac{p(n+2)}{n}\). If we allow the \(x\)-dependence we have the much weaker bound \(q<\frac{p(n+1)}{n}\). If one assumes the local boundedness of the minimizer, the previous conditions can be improved to \(q<p+2\) and \(q<p+1\). The author establishes some natural assumptions on \(F\) which permit to fill the gap between the autonomous and non-autonomous situation.