Special Session 149: Recent developments in Free Boundary Problems and Nonlinear PDEs

A sharp differentiability threshold for minimizers of singular energies
Jose Miguel Urbano
KAUST
Saudi Arabia
Co-Author(s):    Damiao Araujo (UFPB), Aelson Sobral (KAUST), and Eduardo Teixeira (OSU)
Abstract:
We address the borderline regularity of local minimizers of singular energy functionals. For bounded and measurable potentials, we show that sign-changing minimizers are Log-Lipschitz continuous, which is optimal in this generality. In the one-phase case, however, we derive gradient bounds along the free boundary, uncovering a structural gain in regularity. Our first main result establishes sharp Lipschitz regularity for a merely bounded potential. Most notably, we prove that if the potential is further assumed to be a modulus of continuity, then minimizers become continuously differentiable. We thus identify a sharp threshold for differentiability in terms of the potential`s regularity.