A nonlocal free boundary problem

Abstract

Given~$s,\sigma \in (0,1)$ and a bounded domain~$\Omega \subset {\mathbb{R}}^n$, we consider the following minimization problem of $s$-Dirichlet plus $\sigma$-perimeter type $$ [u]_{ H^s(\R^{2n}\setminus(Ω^c)^2) } + \Per_σ\left(\{u>0\},Ω\right), $$ where~$[\cdot {]}_{H^s}$ is the fractional Gagliardo seminorm and $\Per_σ$ is the fractional perimeter. Among other results, we prove a monotonicity formula for the minimizers, glueing lemmata, uniform energy bounds, convergence results, a regularity theory for the planar cones and a trivialization result for the flat case. Several classical free boundary problems are limit cases of the one that we consider in this paper, as $s\nearrow 1$, $\sigma \nearrow 1$ or~$\sigma \searrow 0$.