Complete representation of some functionals showing the Lavrentieff phenomenon (Q2764655)

The paper is concerned with the relaxation of a class of integral functionals of the calculus of variations in space dimension two, exhibiting the Lavrentieff phenomenon. The model problem taken into account deals with the study of the relaxed functional \(\overline F\) of (here \(B\) is the unit ball of \({\mathbb R}^2\) centred at the origin, and \(1<p<2\)) NEWLINE\[NEWLINEF:u\in W^{1,p}(B)\to\int_B\Big\{{|x_2|\over|x|^3}|\langle x,\nabla u\rangle|+|\nabla u|^p\Big\}dx,NEWLINE\]NEWLINE defined by NEWLINE\[NEWLINE\overline F:u\in L^1(B)\to\inf\Big\{\liminf_{h\to\infty}F(u_h) : \{u_h\}\subseteq W^{1,\infty}(B),\;u_h\to u\text{ in }L^1(B)\Big\}.NEWLINE\]NEWLINE It is to be pointed out that the density of the integral in \(F\) does not satisfy ``standard'' growth conditions, but the following one NEWLINE\[NEWLINE|z|^p\leq{|x_2|\over|x|^3}|\langle x,z\rangle|+|z|^p\leq a(x)+|z|^q{\text{ for a.e. }}x\in{\mathbb R}^2{\text{ and every }}z\in{\mathbb R}^2,NEWLINE\]NEWLINE where \(q>2\), and \(a\in L^1_{\text{loc}}({\mathbb R}^2)\). The following representation formula is proved. First of all, it is observed that, if \(u\in W^{1,p}(B)\) is such that \(F(u)<+\infty\), and if \(w(\rho,\theta)=u(\rho\cos\theta,\rho\sin\theta)\), then \(w\) has the trace, say \(w^+(\theta)\), at \(\rho=0\) for a.e. \(\theta\in{\mathbb R}\), and \(\int_0^{2\pi}|\sin\theta||w^+(\theta)|d\theta<+\infty\). Then, it is proved that NEWLINE\[NEWLINE\overline F(u)=\begin{cases} F(u)+\min_{c\in{\mathbb R}}\int_0^{2\pi}|\sin\theta||w^+(\theta)-c|d\theta{\text{ if }} u\in W^{1,p}(B)\text{ and } F(u)<+\infty \\ +\infty \text{ otherwise for every }u\in L^1(B)\end{cases}.NEWLINE\]NEWLINE The novelty of the paper relies in the explicit description of the extra term appearing in the representation formula for \(\overline F\). In the case of slightly more general integrands, it is proved that, for fixed \(u\), \(\overline F(u)\) is not even a measure, once it is regarded as a set function defined on the set of all the open subsets of \({\mathbb R}^2\).