No Arabic abstract
We study two notions of Dirichlet problem associated with BV energy minimizers (also called functions of least gradient) in bounded domains in metric measure spaces whose measure is doubling and supports a $(1,1)$-Poincare inequality. Since one of the two notions is not amenable to the direct method of the calculus of variations, we construct, based on an approach of [23, 29], solutions by considering the Dirichlet problem for $p$-harmonic functions, $p>1$, and letting $pto 1$. Tools developed and used in this paper include the inner perimeter measure of a domain.
For a given domain $Omega subset Bbb{R}^n$, we consider the variational problem of minimizing the $L^1$-norm of the gradient on $Omega$ of a function $u$ with prescribed continuous boundary values and satisfying a continuous lower obstacle condition $uge Psi$ inside $Omega$. Under the assumption of strictly positive mean curvature of the boundary $partialOmega$, we show existence of a continuous solution, with Holder exponent half of that of data and obstacle. This generalizes previous results obtained for the unconstrained and double-obstacle problems. The main new feature in the present analysis is the need to extend various maximum principles from the case of two area-minimizing sets to the case of one sub- and one superminimizing set. This we accomplish subject to a weak regularity assumption on one of the sets, sufficient to carry out the analysis. Interesting open questions include the uniqueness of solutions and a complete analysis of the regularity properties of area superminimizing sets. We provide some preliminary results in the latter direction, namely a new monotonicity principle for superminimizing sets, and the existence of ``foamy superminimizers in two dimensions.
We describe the behavior of p-harmonic Greens functions near a singularity in metric measure spaces equipped with a doubling measure and supporting a Poincare inequality.
We study mean value properties of harmonic functions in metric measure spaces. The metric measure spaces we consider have a doubling measure and support a (1,1)- Poincare inequality. The notion of harmonicity is based on the Dirichlet form defined in terms of a Cheeger differentiable structure. By studying fine properties of the Green function on balls, we characterize harmonic functions in terms of a mean value property. As a consequence, we obtain a detailed description of Poisson kernels. We shall also obtain a Gauss-Green type formula for sets of finite perimeter which posses a Minkowski content characterization of the perimeter. For the Gauss-Green formula we introduce a suitable notion of the interior normal trace of a regular ball.
We prove a compactness result for bounded sequences $(u_j)_j$ of functions with bounded variation in metric spaces $(X,d_j)$ where the space $X$ is fixed but the metric may vary with $j$. We also provide an application to Carnot-Caratheodory spaces.
We develop the long-time analysis for gradient flow equations in metric spaces. In particular, we consider two notions of solutions for metric gradient flows, namely energy and generalized solutions. While the former concept coincides with the notion of curves of maximal slope, we introduce the latter to include limits of time-incremental approximations constructed via the Minimizing Movements approach. For both notions of solutions we prove the existence of the global attractor. Since the evolutionary problems we consider may lack uniqueness, we rely on the theory of generalized semiflows introduced by J.M. Ball. The notions of generalized and energy solutions are quite flexible and can be used to address gradient flows in a variety of contexts, ranging from Banach spaces to Wasserstein spaces of probability measures. We present applications of our abstract results by proving the existence of the global attractor for the energy solutions both of abstract doubly nonlinear evolution equations in reflexive Banach spaces, and of a class of evolution equations in Wasserstein spaces, as well as for the generalized solutions of some phase-change evolutions driven by mean curvature.