Stratification of free boundary points for a two-phase variational problem

In the article under review, the authors prove the local Lipschitz regularity of the minimizes of the two-phase Bernoulli type free boundary problem arising from the minimization of the functional \[ \int_{\Omega} |\nabla u|^p + \lambda_+^p \chi_{\{u>0\}}+ \lambda_-^p \chi_{\{u<0\}}, \quad p\in (1,\infty). \] Here \(\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^N\) is a bounded smooth domain and \(\lambda_\pm\) are positive constants such that \(\lambda_+^p-\lambda_-^p>0\). The set \(\partial\{u>0\}\) is the free boundary. When \(p=2\) the local Lipschitz regularity for the two-phase problem follows from the Alt-Caffarelli-Friedman monotonicity formula. For general \(p\neq 2\) due to the lack of monotonicity formulae the problem was open. The main step of the proof is to show that solutions grow linearly around free boundary points, which is based on a dichotomy: given a free boundary point \(x_0\) and \(k\in \mathbb N\), in \(B_{2^{-k}}(x_0)\) either (i) the free boundary is sufficiently flat; or (ii) the free boundary is not sufficiently flat. In case (i) one can apply the regularity results of Lewis and Nyström to conclude that the free boundary is locally \(C^{1,\alpha}\). The linear growth of solutions then follows from the boundary regularity of \(p\)-harmonic functions. If case (ii) holds for \(1\leq k < k_0\) (\(k_0\) is possibly infinity), the authors show by compactness arguments that solutions have linear growth near \(x_0\) up to the level \(2^{-k_0}\). Measure theoretic properties of the free boundary are also studied in the paper. They show that the free boundary has locally finite \((N-1)\)-Hausdorff measure and the non-smooth free boundary points are of zero \((N-1)\)-Hausdorff measure.

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