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

## TL;DR

This paper characterizes when nonlocal supremal functionals are lower semicontinuous in the $L^
Infty$ setting, identifies conditions for their relaxation, and provides explicit formulas for specific examples, advancing the calculus of variations.

## Contribution

It establishes necessary and sufficient conditions for the lower semicontinuity of nonlocal supremal functionals and demonstrates the preservation of their supremal structure during relaxation.

## Key findings

- Necessary and sufficient condition for lower semicontinuity: separate level convexity.
- Relaxation preserves the supremal structure of the functionals.
- Explicit relaxation formulas are derived for specific multi-well supremands.

## 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.