Linearization in incompatible elasticity for general ambient spaces

Abstract: Motivated by recent interest in elastic problems in which the target space is non-Euclidean, we study a limit where local rest distances within an elastic body are incompatible, yet close to, distances within the ambient space. Specifically, we obtain, via $\Gamma$-convergence, a limit elastic model for a sequence of elastic bodies $(M,g_\varepsilon)$ in an ambient space $(S,s)$, for Riemannian metrics $g_\varepsilon$ and $s$ such that $g_\varepsilon \to s$. Furthermore, we relate the minimum of the limit problem to a linearized curvature discrepancy between $g_\varepsilon$ and $s$, using recent results of Kupferman and Leder. This relation confirms a linearized version of a long-standing conjecture in elasticity regarding the relation between the elastic energy and the curvature of the underlying space. The main technical challenge, compared to other linearization results in elasticity, is obtaining the correct notion of displacement for manifold-valued configurations, using Sobolev truncations and parallel transport. We show that the associated compactness result is obtained if $(S,s)$ satisfies a quantitative rigidity property, analogous to the Friesecke--James--M\"uller rigidity estimate in Euclidean space, and show that this property holds when $(S,s)$ is a round sphere.