No label defined (Q3973625)

[For the entire collection see Zbl 0722.00015.] In this lecture, the author reviews a group of problems where free boundaries are attained as the limit of some singular perturbation problems. The main part of the lecture is devoted to the question of regularity properties of the solution --- and its level surfaces --- to an equation like \(\Delta u=\beta_ \varepsilon(u)\) as local minimizers of \[ J(w)=\int[(\nabla w)^ 2+B_ \varepsilon(w)]dx,\quad\beta_ \varepsilon(w)=B_ \varepsilon'(w), \] where the \(B_ \varepsilon\) are a smoothing of a \(B_ 0\). The author comments the case \(B_ 0(u)=(u^ +)^ \alpha\), in particular the cases \(0<\alpha<2\), \(\alpha=0\), \(\alpha=-1\), describing the general methods of approach. Finally, Caffarelli proposes the study of a `` probabilistic perturbation'' of the original free boundary problem for \(J(w)\) with \(\alpha=2\), defining a ``Gibbs-like'' measure \(d\mu_ \varepsilon=\exp(-J(w)/\varepsilon)dw/Z,Z\) a normalizing factor, and setting \(u_ \varepsilon(x)=E(u(x))\), \(E\) the expected value, and poses questions of regularity, convergence, etc, for this \(u_ \varepsilon\), in dimensions larger than one.