A paper of Legendre revisited (Q4359737)

The paper, starting from a 1788 work by A. M. Legendre, provides existence results for Newton's problem of minimal resistance when posed in some classes of admissible radial functions subject to arclength constraints. Newton's functional describing the resistance of a rotational body moving through a rarefied medium is the following \[ R:u\mapsto \int_\Omega {1\over 1+|\nabla u|^2} dx, \] where \(\Omega\) is ball of \(\mathbb{R}^n\) and \(u:\Omega\to [0,+\infty[\) is a radial function. The determination of suitable classes of admissible functions which minimize \(R\) has interested many mathematicians, among which A. M. Legendre who observed that \(R\) can approach zero on zig-zag functions with large derivatives, therefore he considered the functional on sets of functions taking into account an arclength constraint. Starting from the considerations of Legendre, in the paper existence results concerning the minimization of \(R\) are proved in two different classes of admissible functions, respectively, if \(r=|x|\) and \(u(x)= v(r)\), those for which the integrals \(\int^1_0\sqrt{1+ v^2_r}dr\) and \(\int^1_0\sqrt{1+ v^2_1}\chi_{\{v_r\neq 0\}}dr\) are prescribed. Finally, the shape of the solutions is investigated in the cases \(n=1\) and \(n=2\) and Legendre's solutions are recovered.