A characterization of nonlinear functionals on Sobolev spaces which admit an integral representation with a Carathéodory integrand (Q5896294)

This paper deals with real valued functionals defined on \(W^{1,p}(\Omega;{\mathbb{R}}^ m)\times {\mathcal B}(\Omega),\) where \(\Omega\) is a bounded open subset of \({\mathbb{R}}^ n\), \(W^{1,p}(\Omega;{\mathbb{R}}^ m)\) denotes the Sobolev space of all \({\mathbb{R}}^ m\)-valued functions which are p-th power summable and whose first order distribution derivatives are p-th power summable, and \({\mathcal B}(\Omega)\) denotes the \(\sigma\)-field of all Borel subsets of \(\Omega\). The problem considered is that of representing such functionals F in the form \[ (1)\quad F(u,B)=\int_{B}f(x,u(x),\quad Du(x))dx. \] The paper provides two distinct characterizations of those functionals F for which (1) holds and whose integrands f satisfy the classical continuity conditions of Carathéodory. A different characterization, based on semicontinuity rather than on continuity, is proved for those functionals F which satisfy (1) and whose integrands f are quasi-convex in the sense of Morrey.