On the Regularity of the Free Boundary for Quasilinear Obstacle Problems (1206.6641v2)

Abstract: We extend basic regularity of the free boundary of the obstacle problem to some classes of heterogeneous quasilinear elliptic operators with variable growth that includes, in particular, the $p(x)$-Laplacian. Under the assumption of Lipschitz continuity of the order of the power growth $p(x)>1$, we use the growth rate of the solution near the free boundary to obtain its porosity, which implies that the free boundary is of Lebesgue measure zero for $p(x)$-Laplacian type heterogeneous obstacle problems. Under additional assumptions on the operator heterogeneities and on data we show, in two different cases, that up to a negligible singular set of null perimeter the free boundary is the union of at most a countable family of $C^1$ hypersurfaces: i) by extending directly the finiteness of the $(n-1)$-dimensional Hausdorff measure of the free boundary to the case of heterogeneous $p$-Laplacian type operators with constant $p$; $1<p<\infty$; ii) by proving the characteristic function of the coincidence set is of bounded variation in the case of non degenerate or non singular operators with variable power growth $p(x)\>1$.