Gradient bounds and rigidity results for singular, degenerate, anisotropic partial differential equations (Q398739)

The authors define and treat a variational problem in an anisotropic medium as it relates to surface energy. Such energy originates at an interface of a medium where the microscopic environment differs from the bulk of the material. These anisotropic surface energies are studied in metallurgy and crystallography and have applications to crystal growth and thermodynamics as well as in digital image processing and crystalline mean curvature flows. The current mathematical problem is based on the Wulff crystal structure, as defined by the given energy functional. In this paper, the authors extend previous results to the general case of anisotropic media with possible nonlinearities and singularities in the diffusion operator.