Higher regularity of the free boundary in the elliptic Signorini problem (Q494185)

In this very interesting paper, the authors study the higher regularity of the free boundary for the elliptic Signorini problem. This consists of minimizing the Dirichlet functional \(J(v):=\int_{B_R^+}|\nabla v|^2dx\) over \[ \mathcal{K}=\{v\in W^{1,2}(B_R^+) \;: \;v\geq 0\text{ on } B_R'\}, \] where \(B_R^+=B_R\cap\{x_n>0\}\) and \(B_R'=B_R\cap\{x_n=0\}\). The coincidence set is denoted by \(\Lambda_u=\{x\in B_R' \;: \;u(x)=0\}\) and the free boundary by \(\Gamma_u=\partial_{B_R'}\{x\in B_R' \;: \;u(x)>0\}\). By using a partial hodograph-Legendre transformation, the authors show that the regular part of the free boundary (that is, the set \(\mathcal{R}_u\) of points \(x_0\in \Gamma_u\) such that the blowups of \(u\) at \(x_0\) have the form \(c_n\text{Re}(x_{n-1}+ix_n)^{3/2}\) after a possible rotation of coordinate axes in \(\mathbb{R}^{n-1}\)) is real analytic. It is assumed that all free boundary points are regular and that there exists \(f\in C^{1,\alpha}(\overline{B_R'\cap \{x_{n-1}=0\}})\) with \(f(0)=|\nabla_{x''}f(0)|=0\) such that \[ \Gamma_u=\{(x'',x_{n-1})\in B_R' \;: \;x_{n-1}=f(x'')\}, \] \[ \Lambda_u=\{(x'',x_{n-1})\in B_R' \;: \;x_{n-1}\leq f(x'')\}. \] The main tool used to improve on the known regularity of the free boundary is a partial hodograph-Legendre transformation. The goal is to straighten the free boundary and then apply the boundary regularity of the solution to the transformed elliptic PDE. The invertibility of the hodograph transform (which is only \(C^{0,1/2}\) regular) is overcome by studying the precise asymptotic behavior of the solutions near regular free boundary points. The difficulty stemming from the fact that the equation satisfied by the Legendre transform is degenerate is tackled by observing that it has a subelliptic structure, which can be viewed as a perturbation of the Baouendi-Grushin operator. The \(L^p\) theory available for that operator and a bootstrapping argument lead to the real analyticity of the free boundary.