On the range of some sets of homogenized potential operators (Q2576175)

The author considers nonlinear elliptic operators of the type \(\text{div} \left( \mathcal{F}^{\prime }\left( x,\nabla u\left( x\right) \right) \right) \) where \(\mathcal{F}^{\prime }\) is the gradient, with respect to the second variable, of a Carathéodory function \(\mathcal{F}:\mathbb{R}^{n}\times \mathbb{R}^{n\times m}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}\).\ Assuming that \(\mathcal{F} \left( x,.\right) \) belongs to a fixed set \(M\) of strictly convex and continuously differentiable functions with \(p\)-growth at infinity, the author considers the associated Nemytskii operator \(a\left( z\right) =\int_{K}\mathcal{F}^{\prime }\left( x,z+\nabla u_{z}\left( x\right) \right) dx\), where \(K=\left( 0,1\right) ^{n}\) and \(u_{z}\) is the \(K\)-periodic solution in \(W_{\text{loc}}^{1,p}\left( \mathbb{R}^{n},\mathbb{R}^{n}\right) \) of the cell problem \(\text{div}\left( \mathcal{F}^{\prime }\left( x,z+\nabla u\left( x\right) \right) \right) =0\). The purpose of the paper is to prove the existence of some continuously differentiable (\(\text{curl}\), \(\text{div}\)) quasi-convex function \( \mathcal{L}:\mathbb{R}^{n\times m}\times \mathbb{R}^{n\times m}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}\) such that the closure of the set \(\mathcal{R}\left( z\right) =\left\{ \xi \in \mathbb{R}^{n\times m}\mid \xi =a\left( z\right) \right\} \) is the zero-level set of the function \(z\mapsto \mathcal{L}\left( z\right) -\left\langle \xi ,z\right\rangle \). This extends to the nonlinear case earlier works dealing with homogenization results and more specifically those describing the G-closed sets of operators satisfying some uniform property. For example, the case of linear operators satisfying some uniform continuity and coercivity properties is well known.