Weakly differentiable functions on varifolds (Q2822160)

Integral varifolds were introduced by \textit{F.~J.~Almgren Jr.} [``The theory of varifolds'', Inst. Adv. Stud., Princeton, N.J., 1965] and \textit{W.~K.~Allard} [Ann. Math. (2) 95, 417--491 (1972; Zbl 0252.49028)] for studying critical points of the area functional. If \(M\subset \mathbb R^{n}\) is a countably \(k\)-rectifiable subset of \(\mathbb R^{n}\) and \(\theta: M\to \mathbb R\) is a non-negative locally integrable function, then a rectifiable varifold associated to the pair \((M, \theta)\) is a Radon measure \(V\) on \(M\) such that for \(V\)-almost all \(x\) there exists an approximate tangent plane \(T_xV\) with multiplicity \(\theta^n\). If the density function \(\theta\) is integer-valued, then \(V\) is an integral varifold.NEWLINENEWLINEIn this paper, the author presents a concept of weakly differentiable functions on nonsmooth surfaces in Euclidean spaces, modeled by rectifiable varifolds whose first variation with respect to the area is representable by integration, with arbitrary dimension and codimension arising in variational problems involving the area functional. In order to connect the first variation of the varifold with the concept of weakly differentiable function, the author uses an entirely new notion rather than to adapt one of the many concepts of weakly differentiable functions that have been invented for different purposes. Suppose that \(m\), \(n\), with \(m\leq n\), are positive integers, \(U\) is an open subset of \(\mathbb R^n\), and \(V\) is an \(m\)-dimensional rectifiable varifold in \(U\) whose first variation \(\delta V\) is representable by integration. If \(\|\delta V\|\) is a Radon measure and \(Y\) is a finite-dimensional normed vector space, then a \(Y\)-valued \(\|V\|+\|\delta V\|\)-measurable function \(f\) with \(\text{Dom}(f)\subset U\) is called generalized \(V\)-weakly differentiable if and only if there is some \(\|V\|\)-measurable \(\text{Hom}(\mathbb R^n,Y)\)-valuead function \(F\) such that \(\int_{K\cap\{x:|f(x)|\leq s\}}\|F\|d\|V\|<\infty\) for a compact subset \(K\subset U\), that is, it is required that an integration-by-parts identity simultaneously holds for each composition of the function with a smooth real-valued function whose derivative has compact support. Making use of weakly differentiable functions, the author presents a variety of Sobolev-Poincaré-type embeddings, embeddings into spaces of continuous and sometimes Hölder-continuous functions, and pointwise differentiability results both of approximate and integral type as well as coarea formulas. For example, one of the Sobolev inequalities states that there is a positive finite number \(\Gamma\) such that \(\|V\|_{(\beta)}(f)\leq\Gamma(\|V\|_{(1)}(F)+\|\delta V\|_{(1)}(f))\). As some applications, the author obtains the finiteness of the geodesic distance associated with varifolds with suitable summability of the mean curvature and a characterization of curvature varifolds.