English

$W^{s,\frac{n}{s}}$-maps with positive distributional Jacobians

Analysis of PDEs 2026-02-24 v1 Differential Geometry Functional Analysis

Abstract

We extend the well-known result that any fW1,n(Ω,Rn)f \in W^{1,n}(\Omega,\mathbb{R}^n), ΩRn\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^n with strictly positive Jacobian is actually continuous: it is also true for fractional Sobolev spaces Ws,ns(Ω)W^{s,\frac{n}{s}}(\Omega) for any snn+1s \geq \frac{n}{n+1}, where the sign condition on the Jacobian is understood in a distributional sense. Along the way we also obtain extensions to fractional Sobolev spaces Ws,nsW^{s,\frac{n}{s}} of the degree estimates known for W1,nW^{1,n}-maps with positive or non-negative Jacobian, such as the sense-preserving property.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1905.07338,
  title  = {$W^{s,\frac{n}{s}}$-maps with positive distributional Jacobians},
  author = {Siran Li and Armin Schikorra},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1905.07338},
  year   = {2026}
}