Smoothness and stability in the Alt-Phillips problem

TL;DR

This paper investigates the regularity and stability of solutions to the Alt-Phillips free boundary problem with negative exponents, establishing smoothness of free boundaries and deriving stability conditions that rule out certain stable cones.

Contribution

It provides a unified proof of free boundary smoothness for general negative exponents and introduces a new stability criterion for cones in the Alt-Phillips problem.

Findings

Proved $C^{1,eta}$ regularity of free boundaries for negative exponents.

Established a stability condition ruling out stable cones in low dimensions.

Provided a variational criterion linking stability to minimal surface theory.

Abstract

We study the one-phase Alt-Phillips free boundary problem, focusing on the case of negative exponents $\gamma \in (-2,0)$. The goal of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, we prove smoothness of $C^{1,\alpha}$-regular free boundaries by reducing the problem to a class of degenerate quasilinear PDEs, for which we establish Schauder estimates. Such method provide a unified proof of the smoothness for general exponents. On the other hand, by exploiting the higher regularity of solutions, we derive a new stability condition for the Alt-Phillips problem in the negative exponent regime, ruling out the existence of nontrivial axially symmetric stable cones in low dimensions. Finally, we provide a variational criterion for the stability of cones in the Alt-Phillips problem, which recovers the one for minimal surfaces in the singular limit as $\gamma \to -2$.