# Lower semicontinuity and relaxation of nonlocal $L^\infty$-functionals

created by zappale1 on 21 May 2019
modified on 27 Sep 2019

[BibTeX]

Preprint

Inserted: 21 may 2019
Last Updated: 27 sep 2019

Year: 2019

ArXiv: 1905.08832 PDF

Abstract:

We study variational problems involving nonlocal supremal functionals $L^\infty(\Omega;\mathbb{R}^m) \ni u\mapsto {\rm ess sup}_{(x,y)\in \Omega\times \Omega} W(u(x), u(y)),$ where $\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^n$ is a bounded, open set and $W:\mathbb{R}^m\times\mathbb{R}^m\to \mathbb{R}$ is a suitable function. Motivated by existence theory via the direct method, we identify a necessary and sufficient condition for $L^\infty$-weak$^\ast$ lower semicontinuity of these functionals, namely, separate level convexity of a symmetrized and suitably diagonalized version of the supremands. More generally, we show that the supremal structure of the functionals is preserved during the process of relaxation. Whether the same statement holds in the related context of double-integral functionals is currently still open. Our proof relies substantially on the connection between supremal and indicator functionals. This allows us to recast the relaxation problem into characterizing weak$^\ast$ closures of a class of nonlocal inclusions, which is of independent interest. To illustrate the theory, we determine explicit relaxation formulas for examples of functionals with different multi-well supremands.