Let $L:{ℝ}^N\times {ℝ}^N\to ℝ$ be a Borelian function and consider the following problems $$inf\left\{F\left(y\right)={\int }_a^{b}L(y\left(t\right),y^{\text{'}}\left(t\right))\mathrm{d}t:y\in AC([a,b],{ℝ}^N),y\left(a\right)=A,y\left(b\right)=B\right\}\left(P\right)$$
 $$inf\left\{F^{**}\left(y\right)={\int }_a^b{L}^{**}(y\left(t\right),y^{\text{'}}\left(t\right))\mathrm{d}t:y\in AC([a,b],{ℝ}^N),y\left(a\right)=A,y\left(b\right)=B\right\}·\left(P^{**}\right)$$ We give a sufficient condition, weaker then superlinearity, under which $infF=inf{F}^{**}$ if is just continuous in . We then extend a result of Cellina on the Lipschitz regularity of the minima of when is not superlinear.

We provide a detailed analysis of the minimizers of the functional $u\mapsto {\int }_{{ℝ}^n}{\left|\nabla u\right|}^2+D{\int }_{{ℝ}^n}{\left|u\right|}^{\gamma }$, $\gamma \in (0,2)$, subject to the constraint ${\parallel u\parallel }_{L^2}=1$. This problem, , describes the long-time behavior of the parabolic Anderson in probability theory or ground state solutions of a nonlinear Schrödinger equation. While existence can be proved with standard methods, we show that the usual uniqueness results obtained with PDE-methods can be considerably simplified by additional variational arguments. In addition, we investigate qualitative...

A linearly convergent iterative algorithm that approximates the rank-1 convex envelope $f^{rc}$ of a given function $f:{ℝ}^{n\times m}\to ℝ$, the largest function below which is convex along all rank-1 lines, is established. The proposed algorithm is a modified version of an approximation scheme due to Dolzmann and Walkington.

We consider the problem of minimizing the energy $$E\left(u\right):={\int }_{\Omega }{\left|\nabla u\left(x\right)\right|}^2\mathrm{d}x+{\int }_{S_u\cap \Omega }\left(1+\left|\right[u\left]\right(x\left)\right|\right)\mathrm{d}{H}^{N-1}\left(x\right)$$ among all functions ∈ ²(Ω) for which two level sets $\{u=l_i\}$ have prescribed Lebesgue measure ${\alpha }_i$. Subject to this volume constraint the existence of minimizers for (.) is proved and the asymptotic behaviour of the solutions is investigated.