(High frequency-) uniqueness criteria for \(p\)-growth functionals in in- and compressible elasticity (Q6188386)

The author first considers an incompressible setting in which the energy is defined as: \(E(u)=\int_{B}f(x,\nabla u)dx\), where \(B\subset \mathbb{R}^{2}\) is the unit ball, \(u\in \mathcal{A}_{u_{0}}^{p,c}=\{u\in W^{1,p}(B,\mathbb{R} ^{2}):det\nabla u=1\) a.e. in \(B\), \(u-u_{0}\in C_{c}^{\infty }(B,\mathbb{R} ^{2})\}\), for some \(u_{0}\in W^{1,p}(B,\mathbb{R}^{2})\), \(2\leq p<\infty \), satisfying \(det\nabla u_{0}=1\) a.e. in \(B\), \(f:B\times \mathbb{R} ^{2\times 2}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}\) is defined as \(f(x,\xi )=v (x)\left\vert \xi \right\vert ^{p}\), for a.e. \(x\in B\) and \(\xi \in \mathbb{R }^{2\times 2}\), and \(v\in L^{\infty }(B)\) being nonnegative a.e. in \(B\). A function \(u\) in \(W^{1,p}(B,\mathbb{R}^{2})\) is a stationary point of \(E\) if there exists a map \(\lambda \in L^{p^{\prime }}(B)\) with \(1/p+1/p^{\prime }=1 \), such that the Euler-Lagrange equation \(div(\nabla _{\xi }f(x,\nabla u)+p\lambda (x)cof\nabla u)=0\) is satisfied in \(\mathcal{D}^{\prime }(B)\). The main result considers a stationary point \(u\in W^{1,p}(B,\mathbb{R}^{2})\) of \(E\), defines \(\sigma (x)=\sqrt{v(x)\left\vert \nabla u(x)\right\vert |^{p-2}}\in L^{4/p-2}(B)\), and assumes the existence of \( l\in \mathbb{N}\) such that \(\left\vert \sigma _{,\theta }(x)\right\vert \leq l\sigma (x)\) for a.e. \(x\in B\). If the function \(\lambda \) associated with \(u \) exists and satisfies \(\left\vert \nabla \lambda (x)R\right\vert _{\infty }\leq \frac{n}{\sqrt{2}}v(x)\left\vert \nabla u\right\vert ^{p-2}\) for a.e. \(x\in B\), for some \(n\in \mathbb{N}\), \(u\) is a minimizer of \(E\) in some subclass of \(\mathcal{A}_{u_{0}}^{p,c}\). If the function \(\lambda \) exists and satisfies \(\left\vert \nabla \lambda (x)R\right\vert _{\infty }\leq \frac{\sqrt{3}mv(x)\left\vert \nabla u\right\vert ^{p-2}}{2 \sqrt{2}}\) for a.e. \(x\in B\), for some \(m\in \mathbb{N}\), \(u\) is a minimizer of \(E\) in another subclass of \(\mathcal{A}_{u_{0}}^{p,c}\). In both cases, the author proves uniqueness results for this minimizer \(u\), assuming some positivity hypothesis on \(\sigma \) and that the preceding inequalities concerning \(\left\vert \nabla \lambda (x)R\right\vert _{\infty }\) are strict. Moving to the compressible setting, he defines \(\mathcal{A} _{u_{0}}^{p}=\{u\in W^{1,p}(B,\mathbb{R}^{2}):u-u_{0}\in C_{c}^{\infty }(B, \mathbb{R}^{2})\}\), for some \(u_{0}\in W^{1,p}(B,\mathbb{R}^{2})\), \(2\leq p<\infty \), and the energy \(I(u)=\int_{B}\Phi (x,\nabla u)dx\), where \(\Phi (x,\xi )=v(x)^{p}\left\vert \xi \right\vert ^{p}+\Psi (x,\xi ,det\xi ) \), \((\xi ,d)\rightarrow \Psi (x,\xi ,d)\) being convex for a.e. \(x\in B\), possibly negative and such that there exits \(C\in L^{\infty }(B)\) nonnegative a.e. in \(B\) and satisfying \(0\leq \Phi (x,\xi )\leq \frac{C(x)}{p }(1+\left\vert \xi \right\vert ^{p})\) for all \(\xi \in \mathbb{R}^{2\times 2} \) and a.e. \(\xi \in \mathbb{R}^{2\times 2}\), \(v\in L^{\infty }(B)\) being nonnegative a.e. in \(B\) and optimal in the sense that there can be no term of the form \(a(x)\left\vert \xi \right\vert ^{q}\) for any \(q\geq p\) in \(\Psi \). A function \(u\) in \(\mathcal{A}_{u_{0}}^{p}\) is a stationary point of \(I\) if \(u\) satisfies the Euler-Lagrange equation: \(div(v(x)\left\vert \nabla u\right\vert ^{p-2}\nabla u+\partial _{\xi }\Phi (x,\nabla u,d_{\nabla u})+\partial _{d}\Phi (x,\nabla u,d_{\nabla u})cof\nabla u)=0\) in \(\mathcal{D}^{\prime }(B)\). The main result here proves existence and uniqueness results for a minimizer of \(I\) in subclasses of \(\mathcal{A} _{u_{0}}^{p}\), under appropriate hypotheses on \(\sigma (x)\). In both cases, the proof is obtained analyzing the properties of the energy and proving a lower bound on this energy using the Euler-Lagrange equation and a Poincar é-type, Hölder and Cauchy-Schwarz inequalities.