Extremal function for capacity and estimates of QED constants in \(\mathbb{R}^n\) (Q728244)

The authors investigate some properties of quasiextremal distance (QED) domains. Recall that such domains \(\Omega\subset{\mathbb R}^n\) are those domains for which there exists a constant \(M>0\) such that \[ \text{mod}(A,B;{\mathbb R}^n)\leq M \text{mod}(A,B;\Omega) \] for any pair of disjoint continua \(A,B\) in \(\overline\Omega\). In such a case, we define the QED constant \(M(\Omega)\) by \[ M(\Omega)=\sup \frac{\text{mod}(A,B;{\mathbb R}^n)}{\text{mod}(A,B;\Omega)}, \] where the supremum is taken over all pairs of disjoint continua \(A,B\) of \(\overline\Omega\) such that \(\text{mod}(A,B;{\mathbb R}^n)\) and \(\text{mod}(A,B;\Omega)\) are not simultaneous zero at infinity. The first result of the paper reads as follows. \noindent Theorem 1. Let \(C(A,B;\Omega)\) be a capacitor in \({\mathbb R}^n\) and \(G=\Omega\setminus(A\cup B)\) be connected. Then there exists a function \(u\in ACL(G)\) such that (a) \(\text{cap}(A,B;\Omega)=\int_G|\nabla u|^n dm\); (b) \(\lim_{x\to x_0}u(x)=0\) or 1 for each boundary point \(x_0\in \partial A\) or \(x_0\in \partial B\), respectively; (c) \(u\) is a weak solution of \(\text{div}(|\nabla u|^{n-2}\nabla u)=0\) in \(G\); (d) \(u\) satisfying the above properties is unique up to an additive constant. The second main result of the paper reads as follows. \noindent Theorem 2. Let \(\Omega\subset {\mathbb R}^n\) be a QED domain whose boundary admits a quasiconformal reflection. Then \(M(\Omega)\) is attained by a non-degenerate continua or \(M(\Omega)\leq 1+H(\Omega)\), where \(H(\Omega)\) is the so-called boundary (quasiconformal) reflection constant.