On functions whose symmetric part of gradient agree and a generalization of Reshetnyak’s compactness theorem

Abstract

We consider the following question: Given a connected open domain ${\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^n}$, suppose ${u, v : \Omega \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^n}$ with det${(\nabla u) > 0}$, det${(\nabla v) > 0}$ a.e. are such that ${\nabla u^T(x)\nabla u(x) = \nabla v(x)^T \nabla v(x)}$ a.e. , does this imply a global relation of the form ${\nabla v(x) = R\nabla u(x)}$ a.e. in Ω where ${R \in SO(n)}$ ? If u, v are C ¹ it is an exercise to see this true, if ${u, v\in W^{1,1}}$ we show this is false. In Theorem 1 we prove this question has a positive answer if ${v \in W^{1,1}}$ and ${u \in W^{1,n}}$ is a mapping of L ^p integrable dilatation for p > n − 1. These conditions are sharp in two dimensions and this result represents a generalization of the corollary to Liouville’s theorem that states that the differential inclusion ${\nabla u \in SO(n)}$ can only be satisfied by an affine mapping. Liouville’s corollary for rotations has been generalized by Reshetnyak who proved convergence of gradients to a fixed rotation for any weakly converging sequence ${v_k \in W^{1,1}}$ for which

$$\int \limits_{\Omega} {\rm dist}(\nabla v_k, SO(n))dz \rightarrow 0 \, {\rm as} \, k \rightarrow \infty.$$

Let S(·) denote the (multiplicative) symmetric part of a matrix. In Theorem 3 we prove an analogous result to Theorem 1 for any pair of weakly converging sequences ${v_k \in W^{1,p}}$ and ${u_k \in W^{1,\frac{p(n-1)}{p-1}}}$ (where ${p \in [1, n]}$ and the sequence (u _k ) has its dilatation pointwise bounded above by an L ^r integrable function, r > n − 1) that satisfy ${\int_{\Omega} |S(\nabla u_k) - S(\nabla v_k)|^p dz \rightarrow 0}$ as k → ∞ and for which the sign of the det${(\nabla v_k)}$ tends to 1 in L ¹. This result contains Reshetnyak’s theorem as the special case (u _k ) ≡ Id, p = 1.