Nonlocal minimal graphs in the plane are generically sticky

Abstract: We prove that nonlocal minimal graphs in the plane exhibit generically stickiness effects and boundary discontinuities. More precisely, we show that if a nonlocal minimal graph in a slab is continuous up to the boundary, then arbitrarily small perturbations of the far-away data produce boundary discontinuities. Hence, either a nonlocal minimal graph is discontinuous at the boundary, or a small perturbation of the prescribed conditions produces boundary discontinuities. The proof relies on a sliding method combined with a fine boundary regularity analysis, based on a discontinuity/smoothness alternative. Namely, we establish that nonlocal minimal graphs are either discontinuous at the boundary or their derivative is H"older continuous up to the boundary. In this spirit, we prove that the boundary regularity of nonlocal minimal graphs in the plane "jumps" from discontinuous to

C^{1, g a m m a}

, with no intermediate possibilities allowed. In particular, we deduce that the nonlocal curvature equation is always satisfied up to the boundary. As an interesting byproduct of our analysis, one obtains a detailed understanding of the "switch" between the regime of continuous (and hence differentiable) nonlocal minimal graphs to that of discontinuous (and hence with differentiable inverse) ones.

Review text

The authors consider nonlocal minimal surfaces, first introduced in [\textit{L. Caffarelli} et al., Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 63, No. 9, 1111--1144 (2010; Zbl 1248.53009)], i.e. surfaces minimizing the fractional perimeter inside a, possibly unbounded, given set \(\Omega\). They consider graphical solutions, which have been deeply studied in [\textit{S. Dipierro} et al., Calc. Var. Partial Differ. Equ. 55, No. 4, Paper No. 86, 25 p. (2016; Zbl 1354.49088)] where it was shown that any minimal surface which is a graph outside a cylinder \(\Omega=B\times \mathbb{R}\), with \(B\subset \mathbb{R}^{n-1}\) smooth and bounded, it is a graph over the entire space. In such a setting it is known that solutions may possess discontinuities at the boundary of the cylinder and in order to obtain the boundary datum they need to stick in a vertical manner to the cylinder's walls. Such a phenomenon is known as ``stickiness. In this paper, the authors restrict themselves to consider graphical solutions in \(\mathbb{R}^2\), i.e. to \(B\subset \mathbb{R}\). They prove that either a minimal graph is discontinuous at the boundary, thus producing the stickiness effect, or it is differentiable with Hölder continuous derivative, see Theorem~1.2. Employing this result they then show in Theorem~1.1 that the stickiness property is rather general for minimal graphs, in the sense that continuous solutions (which by Theorem~1.2 are actually differentiable with Hölder continuous derivative) are unstable: there always exists an arbitrarily small perturbation of the exterior datum which yields solutions which are discontinuous at the boundary.

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