Strong approximation of fractional Sobolev maps

Abstract: Brezis and Mironescu have announced several years ago that for a compact manifold

N^{n} s u b s e t m a t h b b R^{u}

and for real numbers

0 < s < 1

and

1 l e p < i n f t y

the class

C^{i} n f t y (o v e r l i n e Q^{m}; N^{n})

of smooth maps on the cube with values into

N^{n}

is dense with respect to the strong topology in the Sobolev space

W^{s, p} (Q^{m}; N^{n})

when the homotopy group

p i_{l f l o o r s p f l o o r} (N^{n})

of order

l f l o o r s p f l o o r

is trivial. The proof of this beautiful result is long and rather involved. Under the additional assumption that

N^{n}

is

l f l o o r s p f l o o r

simply connected, we give a shorter proof of their result. Our proof for

s p g e 1

is based on the existence of a retraction of

m a t h b b R^{u}

onto

N^{n}

except for a small subset in the complement of

N^{n}

and on the Gagliardo-Nirenberg interpolation inequality for maps in

W^{1, q} c a p L^{i} n f t y

. In contrast, the case

s p < 1

relies on the density of step functions on cubes in

W^{s, p}

.

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