We formulate a novel characterization of a family of invertible maps between two-dimensional domains. Our work follows two classic results: The Radó-Kneser-Choquet (RKC) theorem, which establishes the invertibility of harmonic maps into a convex planer domain; and Tutte's embedding theorem for planar graphs - RKC's discrete counterpart - which proves the invertibility of piecewise linear maps of triangulated domains satisfying a discrete-harmonic principle, into a convex planar polygon. In both theorems, the convexity of the target domain is essential for ensuring invertibility. We extend these characterizations, in both the continuous and discrete cases, by replacing convexity with a less restrictive condition. In the continuous case, Alessandrini and Nesi provide a characterization of invertible harmonic maps into non-convex domains with a smooth boundary by adding additional conditions on orientation preservation along the boundary. We extend their results by defining a condition on the normal derivatives along the boundary, which we call the cone condition; this condition is tractable and geometrically intuitive, encoding a weak notion of local invertibility. The cone condition enables us to extend Alessandrini and Nesi to the case of harmonic maps into non-convex domains with a piecewise-smooth boundary. In the discrete case, we use an analog of the cone condition to characterize invertible discrete-harmonic piecewise-linear maps of triangulations. This gives an analog of our continuous results and characterizes invertible discrete-harmonic maps in terms of the orientation of triangles incident on the boundary.
Error estimates for approximations of harmonic functions on planar regions by subspaces spanned by the first harmonic Steklov eigenfunctions are found. They are based on the explicit representation of harmonic functions in terms of these harmonic Steklov eigenfunctions. When the region is a rectangle of aspect ratio h, some computational results regarding these approximations for problems with known explicit solutions are described.
We show that p-harmonic functions in the plane satisfy a nonlinear asymptotic mean value property for p>1. This extends previous results of Manfredi and Lindqvist for certain range of p's.
In this paper, we establish a three circles type theorem, involving the harmonic area function, for harmonic mappings. Also, we give bounds for length and area distortion for harmonic quasiconformal mappings. Finally, we will study certain Lipschitz-type spaces on harmonic mappings.
We discuss various representations of planar $p$-harmonic systems of equations and their solutions. For coordinate functions of $p$-harmonic maps we analyze signs of their Hessians, the Gauss curvature of $p$-harmonic surfaces, the length of level curves as well as we discuss curves of steepest descent. The isoperimetric inequality for the level curves of coordinate functions of planar $p$-harmonic maps is proven. Our main techniques involve relations between quasiregular maps and planar PDEs. We generalize some results due to P. Lindqvist, G. Alessandrini, G. Talenti and P. Laurence.
In this note we give a quantitative estimate on the number of singular points of multiplicity $Q$ of a $2$-dimensional $Q$-valued energy minimizing map, in terms of the value of its frequency function.
In the seminal paper [Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal. 176 (2005), 351--361], Savin proved the $C^1$-regularity of planar $\infty$-harmonic functions $u$. Here we give a new understanding of it from a capacity viewpoint and drop several high technique arguments therein. Our argument is essentially based on a topological lemma of Savin, a flat estimate by Evans and Smart, % \cite{es11a}, $W^{1,2}_{loc}$-regularity of $|Du|$ and Crandall's flow for infinity harmonic functions.
Given an arbitrary planar $\infty$-harmonic function $u$, for each $α>0$ we establish a quantitative local $W^{1,2}$-estimate of $|Du|^α$, which is sharp as $α\to0$. We also show that the distributional determinant of $u$ is a Radon measure enjoying some quantitative lower and upper bounds. As a by-product, for each $p>2$ we obtain some quantitative local $W^{1,p}$-estimates of $u$, and consequently, an $L^p$-Liouville property for $\infty$-harmonic functions in whole plane.
For $0<p<+\infty$, we prove a global $W^{2,p}$-estimate for potentials of optimal transport maps between convex domains in the plane. Among the tools developed for that purpose are obliqueness in general convex domains and estimates for the growth of eccentricity of sections of the potentials.
We study the two dimensional least gradient problem in a convex, but not necessary strictly convex region. We look for solutions in the space of $BV$ functions satisfying the boundary data $f$ in trace sense. We assume that $f$ is in $BV$ too. We state admissibility conditions on the trace and on the domain that are sufficient for existence of solutions.
We consider the volumetric-isochoric split in planar isotropic hyperelasticity and give a precise analysis of rank-one convexity criteria for this case, showing that the Legendre-Hadamard ellipticity condition separates and simplifies in a suitable sense. Starting from the classical two-dimensional criterion by Knowles and Sternberg, we can reduce the conditions for rank-one convexity to a family of one-dimensional coupled differential inequalities. In particular, this allows us to derive a simple rank-one convexity classification for generalized Hadamard energies of the type $W(F)=\fracμ{2}\f…
In convex planar domains, given an initial vorticity with one sign, we study the regularity and geometric properties of the dynamically stable solutions to the Euler equations in the coadjoint orbit of the initial vorticity. These flows have elliptic stagnation points. Under some nondegeneracy conditions on the data, we show they are Holder continuous and have convex level curves. We also give a detailed description for the set of stagnation points. If the initial vorticity has nice level set topology, these stable solutions are in the L^\infty-strong closure of the coadjoint orbit. We also de…
In this note we prove uniqueness of the critical point for positive solutions of elliptic problems in bounded planar domains: we first examine the Poisson problem - Delta u = f(x,y) finding a geometric condition involving the curvature of the boundary and the normal derivative of f on the boundary to ensure uniqueness of the critical point. In the second part we consider stable solutions of the nonlinear problem -Delta u = f(u) in perturbation of convex domains.
In this paper, we study the nonlinear stability of the composite wave consisting of planar rarefaction and planar contact waves for viscous conservation laws with degenerate flux under multi-dimensional periodic perturbations. To the level of our knowledge, it is the first stability result of the composite wave for conservation laws in several dimensions. Moreover, the perturbations studied in the present paper are periodic, which keep constantly oscillating at infinity. Suitable ansatz is constructed to overcome the difficulty caused by this kind of perturbation and delicate estimates are don…
We study the Dirichlet problem for a graph $Σ$ in $\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ with normalized constant mean curvature $H>0$ and planar boundary $Γ=\partial Ω$. Our main result is that the optimal solvability condition, namely that the normalized mean curvature $h$ of $Γ$ satisfies $h\geq H$, also suffices when $Ω$ is strictly convex, to prove the strict convexity of $Σ$.
We study two special cases of the planar least gradient problem. In the first one, the boundary conditions are imposed on a part of the strictly convex domain. In the second case, we impose the Dirichlet data on the boundary of a rectangle, an example of convex but not strictly convex domain. We show the existence of solutions and study their properties for particular cases of data.
In this paper we consider the second eigenfunction of the Laplacian with Dirichlet boundary conditions in convex domains. If the domain has \emph{large eccentricity} then the eigenfunction has \emph{exactly} two nondegenerate critical points (of course they are one maximum and one minimum). The proof uses some estimates proved by Jerison ([Jer95a]) and Grieser-Jerison ([GJ96]) jointly with a topological degree argument. Analogous results for higher order eigenfunctions are proved in rectangular-like domains considered in [GJ09].
We prove the sharp inequality \[ J(Ω) := \frac{λ_1(Ω)}{h_1(Ω)^2} < \frac{π^2}{4},\] where $Ω$ is any planar, convex set, $λ_1(Ω)$ is the first eigenvalue of the Laplacian under Dirichlet boundary conditions, and $h_1(Ω)$ is the Cheeger constant of $Ω$. The value on the right-hand side is optimal, and any sequence of convex sets with fixed volume and diameter tending to infinity is a maximizing sequence. Morever, we discuss the minimization of $J$ in the same class of subsets: we provide a lower bound which improves the generic bound given by Cheeger's inequality, we show the existence of a min…
We study the two dimensional least gradient problem in a convex polygonal set in the plane. We show existence of solutions when the boundary data are attained in the trace sense. Due to the lack of strict convexity, the classical results are not applicable. We state the admissibility conditions on the continuous boundary datum $f$ that are sufficient for establishing an existence and uniqueness result. The solutions are constructed by a limiting process, which uses the well-known geometry of superlevel sets of least gradient functions.
We study the asymptotic behaviour, as a small parameter $\varepsilon$ tends to zero, of minimisers of a Ginzburg-Landau type energy with a nonlinear penalisation potential vanishing on a compact submanifold $\mathcal{N}$ and with a given $\mathcal{N}$-valued Dirichlet boundary data. We show that minimisers converge up to a subsequence to a singular $\mathcal{N}$-valued harmonic map, which is smooth outside a finite number of points around which the energy concentrates and whose singularities' location minimises a renormalised energy, generalising known results by Bethuel, Brezis and Hélein for…
We define renormalised energies for maps that describe the first-order asymptotics of harmonic maps outside of singularities arising due to obstructions generated by the boundary data and the mutliple connectedness of the target manifold. The constructions generalise the definition by Bethuel, Brezis and Hélein for the circle (Ginzburg-Landau vortices, 1994). In general, the singularities are geometrical objects and the dependence on homotopic singularities can be studied through a new notion of synharmony. The renormalised energies are showed to be coercive and Lipschitz-continuous. The renor…
For the $p$-harmonic function with strictly convex level sets, we find a test function which comes from the combination of the norm of gradient of the $p$-harmonic function and the smallest principal curvature of the level sets of $p$-harmonic function. We prove that this curvature function is convex with respect to the height of the $p$-harmonic function. This test function is an affine function of the height when the $p$-harmonic function is the $p$-Green function on the ball. For the minimal graph, we obtain a similar results.
We study the two dimensional least gradient problem in convex polygonal sets in the plane, $Ω$. We show the existence of solutions when the boundary data $f$ are attained in the trace sense. The main difficulty here is a possible discontinuity of $f$. Moreover, due to the lack of strict convexity of $Ω$, the classical results are not applicable. We state the admissibility conditions on the boundary datum $f$, that are sufficient for establishing an existence result. One of them is that $f\in BV(\partialΩ)$. The solutions are constructed by a limiting process, which uses solutions to known prob…
We prove that, in general, given a $p$-harmonic map $F:M\to N$ and a convex function $H:N\to\mathbb{R}$, the composition $H\circ F$ is not $p$-subharmonic. By assuming some rotational symmetry on manifolds and functions, we reduce the problem to an ordinary differential inequality. The key of the proof is an asymptotic estimate for the $p$-harmonic map under suitable assumptions on the manifolds.
For $p\in (1,2]$ and a bounded, convex, nonempty, open set $Ω\subset\mathbb R^2$ let $μ_p(\barΩ,\cdot)$ be the $p$-capacitary curvature measure (generated by the closure $\barΩ$ of $Ω$) on the unit circle $\mathbb S^1$. This paper shows that such a problem of prescribing $μ_p$ on a planar convex domain: "Given a finite, nonnegative, Borel measure $μ$ on $\mathbb S^1$, find a bounded, convex, nonempty, open set $Ω\subset\mathbb R^2$ such that $dμ_p(\barΩ,\cdot)=dμ(\cdot)$" is solvable if and only if $μ$ has centroid at the origin and its support $\mathrm{supp}(μ)$ does not comprise any pair of …
We consider the Euler system set on a bounded convex planar domain, endowed with impermeability boundary conditions. This system is a model for the barotropic mode of the Primitive Equations on a rectangular domain. We show the existence of weak solutions with L^p vorticity for 4/3<= p <= 2, extending and enriching a previous result of Taylor. In the physically interesting case of a rectangular domain, a similar result holds for all 2<p<\infty as well. Moreover, we show the uniqueness of solutions with bounded initial vorticity. The main tool is a new BMO regularity estimate for the Dirichlet …
In dimension 2, we introduce a distributional Jacobian determinant $\det DV_β(Dv)$ for the nonlinear complex gradient $(x_1,x_2)\mapsto |Dv|^β(v_{x_1},-v_{x_2})$ for any $β>-1$, whenever $v\in W^{1,2 }_{\text{loc}}$ and $β|Dv|^{1+β}\in W^{1,2}_{\text{loc}}$. Then for any planar $\infty$-harmonic function $u$, we show that such distributional Jacobian determinant is a nonnegative Radon measure with some quantitative local lower and upper bounds. We also give the following two applications. (i) Applying this result with $β=0$, we develop an approach to build up a Liouville theorem, which improve…
The Hardy constant of a simply connected domain $Ω\subset\mathbf{R}^2$ is the best constant for the inequality \[ \int_Ω|\nabla u|^2dx \geq c\int_Ω \frac{u^2}{{\rm dist}(x,\partialΩ)^2}\, dx \; , \;\;\quad u\in C^{\infty}_c(Ω). \] After the work of Ancona where the universal lower bound 1/16 was obtained, there has been a substantial interest on computing or estimating the Hardy constant of planar domains. In \cite{BT} we have determined the Hardy constant of an arbitrary quadrilateral in the plane. In this work we continue our investigation and we compute the Hardy constant for other non-conv…
We derive a lower bound for energies of harmonic maps of convex polyhedra in $ \R^3 $ to the unit sphere $S^2,$ with tangent boundary conditions on the faces. We also establish that $C^\infty$ maps, satisfying tangent boundary conditions, are dense with respect to the Sobolev norm, in the space of continuous tangent maps of finite energy.
