Conditions for Eliminating Cusps in One-Phase Free Boundary Problems with Degeneracy

Abstract

In this paper, we continue the study local minimizers of a degenerate version of the Alt-Caffarelli functional. Specifically, we consider local minimizers of the functional $J_Q(u,\Omega ):={\int }_{\Omega }|\nabla u{|}^2+Q(x{)}^2{\chi }_{\{u>0\}}dx$ where $Q(x)=dist(x,\Gamma {)}^{\gamma }$ for $\gamma >0$ and $\Gamma$ a submanifold of dimension $0\le k\le n-1$. Previously, it was shown that on $\Gamma$, the free boundary $\partial \{u>0\}$ may be decomposed into a rectifiable set $\mathcal{S}$, which satisfies effective estimates, and a cusp set $\Sigma$. In this note, we prove that under mild assumptions, in the case $n=2$ and $\Gamma$ a line, the cusp set $\Sigma$ does not exist. Building upon the work of Arama and Leoni \cite{AramaLeoni12}, our results apply to the physical case of a variational formulation of the Stokes' wave and provide a complete characterization of the singular portion of the free boundary in complete generality in this context.

arXiv comment16 pages