English

A spiral interface with positive Alt-Caffarelli-Friedman limit at the origin

Analysis of PDEs 2020-01-08 v2

Abstract

We give an example of a pair of nonnegative subharmonic functions with disjoint support for which the Alt-Caffarelli-Friedman monotonicity formula has strictly positive limit at the origin, and yet the interface between their supports lacks a (unique) tangent there. This clarifies a remark appearing in the literature (see \cite{cs05}) that the positivity of the limit of the ACF formula implies unique tangents; this is true under some additional assumptions, but false in general. In our example, blow-ups converge to the expected piecewise linear two-plane function along subsequences, but the limiting function depends on the subsequence due to the spiraling nature of the interface.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1801.01940,
  title  = {A spiral interface with positive Alt-Caffarelli-Friedman limit at the origin},
  author = {Dennis Kriventsov and Mark Allen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1801.01940},
  year   = {2020}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T23:37:53.016Z