The Nitsche phenomenon for weighted Dirichlet energy (Q784847)

Let \( A(r,R)=\{z \in \mathbb{C}: r <\left \vert z \right \vert < R\}\), where \(0 < r < R <\infty \). This paper is motivated by the study of energy-minimizing homeomorphisms \(h:A(r,R)\rightarrow A(r_{\ast },R_{\ast })\) in relation to weighted Dirichlet energy on \(A(r,R)\). The weight function is assumed to be of the form \(\lambda (\left\vert z\right\vert )\), where \(\lambda \) is a measurable function on \((r,R)\) satisfying \(0 < m \leq \lambda (t)\leq M < \infty \) almost everywhere, and a one-dimensional version of the problem is then studied in terms of functions \(H\) on the interval \([r,R]\). The authors begin by noting that, among all \(H\) in the Sobolev space \(\mathcal{W}^{1,2}(r,R)\) satisfying \(H(r) = r_{\ast } < R_{\ast } = H(R)\), there is a unique one that minimizes \(\lambda \)-energy. Their main result is the corresponding assertion under the additional constraint that \(H^{\prime }\geq 0\) almost everywhere on \((r,R)\), that is, where \(H\) is nondecreasing.