A new proof of Savin's theorem on Allen-Cahn equations

DOI10.4171/JEMS/734MaRDI QIDQ2408258zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Publication date 12 October 2017

Published in Journal of the European Mathematical Society (JEMS) (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.6480

Allen-Cahn equation De Giorgi conjecture

Symmetries, invariants, etc. in context of PDEs (35B06) Entire solutions to PDEs (35B08) Semilinear elliptic equations with Laplacian, bi-Laplacian or poly-Laplacian (35J91)

Abstract: In this paper we establish an improvement of tilt-excess decay estimate for the Allen-Cahn equation, and use this to give a new proof of Savin's theorem on the uniform

C^{1, a l p h a}

regularity of flat level sets, which then implies the one dimensional symmetry of minimizers in

m a t h b b R^{n}

for

n l e q 7

. This generalizes Allard's

v a r e p s i l o n

-regularity theorem for stationary varifolds to the setting of Allen-Cahn equations.

Review text

\textit{E. De Giorgi} [in: Recent methods in non-linear analysis, Proc. int. Meet., Rome 1978, 131--188 (1979; Zbl 0405.49001)] made the following famous conjecture: Suppose that \(u\) satisfies the Allen-Cahn equation \(\Delta u=u^3-u\), \(|u|<1\) and \(\frac{\partial u}{\partial x_{n+1}}>0\) in \(\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\). Then, possibly after a rotation, \(u\) depends only on \(x_{n+1}\) at least when \(n\leq 7\). The restriction in the dimension comes, roughly speaking, from the fact that minimizing solutions of the Allen-Cahn equation (in the sense of Morse) have the property that their level sets at infinity resemble minimal surfaces. More precisely, the monotonicity assumption provides a link with the famous Bernstein's problem for minimal graphs. This conjecture was proven if \(n=1\) by \textit{N. Ghoussoub} and \textit{C. Gui} [Math. Ann. 311, No. 3, 481--491 (1998; Zbl 0918.35046)], and if \(n=2\) by \textit{L. Ambrosio} and {X. Cabré} [J. Am. Math. Soc. 13, No. 4, 725--739 (2000; Zbl 0968.35041)]. On the other hand, this property was shown not to hold if \(n\geq 8\) by \textit{M. del Pino} et al. [Geom. Funct. Anal. 20, No. 4, 918--957 (2010; Zbl 1213.35219)]. This was accomplished by means of constructing a counterexample based on the Bombieri-De Giorgi-Giusti minimal graph. Under the additional assumption that, for any \(x'\in \mathbb{R}^n\), it holds \(u(x',x_{n+1})\to \pm 1\) as \(x_{n+1}\to \pm \infty\), \textit{O. Savin} [Commun. Partial Differ. Equations 32, No. 4, 557--578 (2007; Zbl 1221.35154)] established the validity of De Giorgi's conjecture for \(3\leq n\leq 7\). This followed from showing that minimizing solutions of the Allen-Cahn equation are one-dimensional if \(n\leq 6\). In turn, this followed from an improvement of a flatness result that he established for minimizing solutions (the additional assumption guarantees that \(u\) enjoys this property). This improvement of the flatness property applies to the zero level set of \(u\), and is analogous to that of minimal surfaces. It was proven from the viscosity point of view of the problem, relying heavily on the maximum principle and a Harnack inequality. The author of the current paper proves a variational version of the improvement of the flatness property, involving a tilt-excess decay which parallels classical regularity theories in geometric measure theory such as Allard's regularity theory. This allows him to work in Sobolev spaces, as opposed to viscosity solutions, and recover the aforementioned results of Savin with less use of the maximum principle.

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