Generic regularity of free boundaries for the thin obstacle problem (Q6058893)

In this paper under review, the authors study generic regularity of free boundaries for the thin obstacle problem in \(\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\). It is known that the free boundary for the thin obstacle problem consists of smooth regular points (with homogeneity \(\kappa=\frac{3}{2}\)) and degenerate points (with homogeneity \(\kappa\geq 2\)). In this paper, the authors show that the set of degenerate points has Hausdorff dimension less or equal to \(n-3-\alpha_0\) for some \(\alpha_0>0\) for a generic solution. This in particular implies that the whole free boundary is generically smooth in \(\mathbb{R}^3\) and \(\mathbb{R}^4\). This solves the analogue of a conjecture of Schaeffer in \(\mathbb{R}^3\) and \(\mathbb{R}^4\) for the thin obstacle problem. To describe the notion of genericity and the results more precisely, consider the thin obstacle problem in \(B_1\subset \mathbb{R}^{n+1}\): \begin{align*} &\Delta u = 0 \text{ in } B_1\setminus \{x_{n+1}=0\},\quad \min\{u, -\Delta u \} = 0 \text{ on } B_1\cap \{x_{n+1}=0\},\\ &u(x',x_{n+1})=u(x',-x_{n+1}) \text{ in } B_1. \end{align*} Let \(u(\cdot, t): B_1\times [-1,1]\rightarrow \mathbb{R}\) be a monotone family of solutions to the above thin obstacle problem, which satisfies \begin{align*} u(\cdot,t')-u(\cdot, t)\geq t'-t \text{ on } \partial B_1 \cap \{|x_{n+1}|\geq \frac{1}{2}\},\quad \forall -1\leq t<t'\leq 1. \end{align*} The authors show that for almost every \(t\in [-1,1]\), \(\text{Deg}(u(\cdot, t))=\emptyset\) for \(n\leq 3\), and \(\text{dim}_{\mathcal{H}}(\text{Deg}(u(\cdot, t))\leq n-3-\alpha_0\) for some \(\alpha_0>0\) if \(n\geq 4\). Here \(\text{Deg}(u)\) denotes the set of degenerate free boundary points for a solution \(u\). This in particular gives the smoothness of the free boundary in \(\mathbb{R}^3\) and \(\mathbb{R}^4\) for almost every \(t\). For the proof the authors rely on the methods developed in [\textit{A. Figalli} et al., Publ. Math., Inst. Hautes Étud. Sci. 132, 181--292 (2020; Zbl 1456.35234)] for the classical obstacle problem, as well as some recent results on asymptotics of solutions around certain degenerate points for the thin obstacle problem.