On the electrostatic Born-Infeld equation with extended charges (Q328484)

The equation of charge preservation for electric potential fields \(E=-\nabla\varphi\) with a potential \(\varphi\) (without loss of generality decaying at infinity) is given by \(\nabla^{\top}D=\rho\), where we have a material relation \(D=F\left(E\right)\) between the electric field \(E\) and the displacement current density \(D\). In the framework of the Born-Infeld theory this material relation is non-linear and specifically of the form \[ F\left(E\right)=\frac{\epsilon_{0}}{\sqrt{1-\alpha_{0}\left|E\right|^{2}}}E,\:\epsilon_{0},\alpha_{0}\in]0,\infty[\:. \] Without loss of generality we may assume \(\alpha_{0}=1\) and \(\epsilon_{0}=1\) leading to the Born-Infeld equation \[ -\nabla^{\top}\left(\frac{1}{\sqrt{1-\left|\nabla\varphi\right|^{2}}}\nabla\varphi\right)=\rho. \] This problem is approached here more generally in \(\mathbb{R}^{N}\), \(N\in\mathbb{N}\), \(N\geq3\), via variational methods noting that it is formally the Euler equation associated with the action functional \[ I\left(\varphi\right)=\int_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}\left(1-\sqrt{1-\left|\nabla\varphi\right|^{2}}\right)\:dx-\left\langle \rho|\varphi\right\rangle . \] It is shown that the unique minimizer for locally bounded charge densities \(\rho\) in suitable spaces yields a weak solution of the Born-Infeld equation. For smooth \(\rho\) the weak solution is also classical. After recovering the radially symmetric case the special choice of \(\rho\) as a linear combination of Dirac-\(\delta\)-sources is considered. In two concluding sections the issues of approximating the action functional \(I\) and coupling with the non-linear Klein-Gordon equation is embedded in a class of generalized action functionals replacing the role of \(\rho\) with a class of non-linear functionals.