English

Regularity of the optimal sets for a class of integral shape functionals

Analysis of PDEs 2022-12-20 v1

Abstract

We prove {the first} regularity theorem for the free boundary of solutions to shape optimization problems involving integral functionals, for which the energy of a domain Ω\Omega is obtained as the integral of a cost function j(u,x)j(u,x) depending on the solution uu of a certain PDE problem on Ω\Omega. The main feature of these functionals is that the minimality of a domain Ω\Omega cannot be translated into a variational problem for a single (real or vector valued) state function. In this paper we focus on the case of affine cost functions j(u,x)=g(x)u+Q(x)j(u,x)=-g(x)u+Q(x), where uu is the solution of the PDE Δu=f-\Delta u=f with Dirichlet boundary conditions. We obtain the Lipschitz continuity and the non-degeneracy of the optimal uu from the inwards/outwards optimality of Ω\Omega and then we use the stability of Ω\Omega with respect to variations with smooth vector fields in order to study the blow-up limits of the state function uu. By performing a triple consecutive blow-up, we prove the existence of blow-up sequences converging to homogeneous stable solution of the one-phase Bernoulli problem and according to the blow-up limits, we decompose Ω\partial\Omega into a singular and a regular part. In order to estimate the Hausdorff dimension of the singular set of Ω\partial\Omega we give a new formulation of the notion of stability for the one-phase problem, which is preserved under blow-up limits and allows to develop a dimension reduction principle. Finally, by combining a higher order Boundary Harnack principle and a viscosity approach, we prove CC^\infty regularity of the regular part of the free boundary when the data are smooth.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2212.09118,
  title  = {Regularity of the optimal sets for a class of integral shape functionals},
  author = {Giuseppe Buttazzo and Francesco Paolo Maiale and Dario Mazzoleni and Giorgio Tortone and Bozhidar Velichkov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2212.09118},
  year   = {2022}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T07:41:03.178Z