Rigidity of a non-elliptic differential inclusion related to the Aviles-Giga conjecture

TL;DR

This paper establishes sharp regularity results for a non-elliptic differential inclusion related to the Aviles-Giga conjecture, advancing understanding of energy concentration and stability in related variational problems.

Contribution

It provides the first sharp regularity theorem for a non-elliptic differential inclusion connected to the Aviles-Giga functional, extending prior elliptic regularity results.

Findings

Sharp regularity for the differential inclusion into set K

Equivalence of zero energy states with solutions of the inclusion

New insights into energy concentration and stability estimates

Abstract

In this paper we prove sharp regularity for a differential inclusion into a set $K\subset\mathbb{R}^{2\times 2}$ that arises in connection with the Aviles-Giga functional. The set $K$ is not elliptic, and in that sense our main result goes beyond \v{S}ver\'{a}k's regularity theorem on elliptic differential inclusions. It can also be reformulated as a sharp regularity result for a critical nonlinear Beltrami equation. In terms of the Aviles-Giga energy, our main result implies that zero energy states coincide (modulo a canonical transformation) with solutions of the differential inclusion into $K$. This opens new perspectives towards understanding energy concentration properties for Aviles-Giga: quantitative estimates for the stability of zero energy states can now be approached from the point of view of stability estimates for differential inclusions. All these reformulations of our results are strong improvements of a recent work by the last two authors Lorent and Peng, where the link between the differential inclusion into $K$ and the Aviles-Giga functional was first observed and used. Our proof relies moreover on new observations concerning the algebraic structure of entropies.