Partial continuity for elliptic problems (Q930016)

The main aim of this paper is to address the question of regularity of solutions for vectorial elliptic systems that are put in variational form. The authors consider the system in a divergence form \[ \mathrm{div}\,a(x,u(x),Du(x))=0 \] in a bounded domain \(\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^n\), where \(a\) is a continuous vector field such that \(z\mapsto a(\cdot ,\cdot ,z)\) is of class \( C^{1}\). The following assumptions are imposed: \[ \nu (1+| z| )^{p-2}| \lambda | ^{2}\leq \langle a_{z}(x,u,z)\lambda ,\lambda \rangle \leq L(1+| z| )^{p-2}| \lambda | ^{2}, \] \[ | a(x,u,z)-a(y,v,z)| \leq L\omega (| x-y| ^{2}+| u-v| ^{2})(1+| z| )^{p-1}, \] \[ | a_{z}(x,u,z_{2})-a_{z}(x,u,z_{1})| \leq L {\mu} \frac{| z_{2}-z_{1}| }{1+| z_{1}| +| z_{2}| }(1+| z_{1}| +| z_{2}| )^{p-2} \] for all \(x,y\in \Omega \), \(u,v\in \mathbb{R}^N\), \(z,z_{1},z_{2},\lambda \in \mathbb{R}^{Nn}\). Here \(\omega ,\mu \) are two moduli of continuity. The authors prove the partial Hölder continuity for solutions to the elliptic systems considered. Having established these results they investigate the regularity for minimizers of quasi-convex variational integrals with continuous integrands satisfying assumptions similar to the ones mentioned above. As it common in investigating the regularity of solutions the arguments of the Authors rely on comparisons to solutions of linearized systems in order to establish the decay of some excess functional. In doing so they employ a new type of excess functional measuring the oscillations in the solution and its gradient. To establish the decay estimate, they use the technique of \(\mathcal{A}\)-harmonic approximation, based on \textit{F. Duzaar} and \textit{K. Steffen}'s \(\mathcal{A}\)-harmonic approximation lemma [J. Reine Angew. Math. 546, 73--138 (2002; Zbl 0999.49024)].