Includes twenty-six papers that survey a cross section of work in modern geometric measure theory and its applications in the calculus of variations. This title provides an access to the material, including introductions and summaries of many of the authors' much longer works and a section containing 80 open problems in the field.
"This book is a major treatise in mathematics and is essential in the working library of the modern analyst." (Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society)
Geometric Measure Theory: A Beginner's Guide provides information pertinent to the development of geometric measure theory. This book presents a few fundamental arguments and a superficial discussion of the regularity theory. Organized into 12 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the purpose and fundamental concepts of geometric measure theory. This text then provides the measure-theoretic foundation, including the definition of Hausdorff measure and covering theory. Other chapters consider the m-dimensional surfaces of geometric measure theory called rectifiable sets and introduce the two basic tools of the regularity theory of area-minimizing surfaces. This book discusses as well the fundamental theorem of geometric measure theory, which guarantees solutions to a wide class of variational problems in general dimensions. The final chapter deals with the basic methods of geometry and analysis in a generality that embraces manifold applications. This book is a valuable resource for graduate students, mathematicians, and research workers.
This textbook introduces geometric measure theory through the notion of currents. Currents, continuous linear functionals on spaces of differential forms, are a natural language in which to formulate types of extremal problems arising in geometry, and can be used to study generalized versions of the Plateau problem and related questions in geometric analysis. Motivating key ideas with examples and figures, this book is a comprehensive introduction ideal for both self-study and for use in the classroom. The exposition demands minimal background, is self-contained and accessible, and thus is ideal for both graduate students and researchers.
The marriage of analytic power to geometric intuition drives many of today's mathematical advances, yet books that build the connection from an elementary level remain scarce. This engaging introduction to geometric measure theory bridges analysis and geometry, taking readers from basic theory to some of the most celebrated results in modern analysis. The theory of sets of finite perimeter provides a simple and effective framework. Topics covered include existence, regularity, analysis of singularities, characterization and symmetry results for minimizers in geometric variational problems, starting from the basics about Hausdorff measures in Euclidean spaces and ending with complete proofs of the regularity of area-minimizing hypersurfaces up to singular sets of codimension 8. Explanatory pictures, detailed proofs, exercises and remarks providing heuristic motivation and summarizing difficult arguments make this graduate-level textbook suitable for self-study and also a useful reference for researchers. Readers require only undergraduate analysis and basic measure theory.
This is the first of two books on methods and techniques in the calculus of variations. Contemporary arguments are used throughout the text to streamline and present in a unified way classical results, and to provide novel contributions at the forefront of the theory. This book addresses fundamental questions related to lower semicontinuity and relaxation of functionals within the unconstrained setting, mainly in L^p spaces. It prepares the ground for the second volume where the variational treatment of functionals involving fields and their derivatives will be undertaken within the framework of Sobolev spaces. This book is self-contained. All the statements are fully justified and proved, with the exception of basic results in measure theory, which may be found in any good textbook on the subject. It also contains several exercises. Therefore,it may be used both as a graduate textbook as well as a reference text for researchers in the field. Irene Fonseca is the Mellon College of Science Professor of Mathematics and is currently the Director of the Center for Nonlinear Analysis in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research interests lie in the areas of continuum mechanics, calculus of variations, geometric measure theory and partial differential equations. Giovanni Leoni is also a professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. He focuses his research on calculus of variations, partial differential equations and geometric measure theory with special emphasis on applications to problems in continuum mechanics and in materials science.
This book collects together lectures by some of the leaders in the field of partial differential equations and geometric measure theory. It features a wide variety of research topics in which a crucial role is played by the interaction of fine analytic techniques and deep geometric observations, combining the intuitive and geometric aspects of mathematics with analytical ideas and variational methods. The problems addressed are challenging and complex, and often require the use of several refined techniques to overcome the major difficulties encountered. The lectures, given during the course "Partial Differential Equations and Geometric Measure Theory'' in Cetraro, June 2–7, 2014, should help to encourage further research in the area. The enthusiasm of the speakers and the participants of this CIME course is reflected in the text.
At the summer school in Pisa in September 1996, Luigi Ambrosio and Norman Dancer each gave a course on the geometric problem of evolution of a surface by mean curvature, and degree theory with applications to PDEs respectively. This self-contained presentation accessible to PhD students bridged the gap between standard courses and advanced research on these topics. The resulting book is divided accordingly into 2 parts, and neatly illustrates the 2-way interaction of problems and methods. Each of the courses is augmented and complemented by additional short chapters by other authors describing current research problems and results.
This book provides a detailed examination of the central assertions of measure theory in n-dimensional Euclidean space and emphasizes the roles of Hausdorff measure and the capacity in characterizing the fine properties of sets and functions. Topics covered include a quick review of abstract measure theory, theorems and differentiation in Mn, lower Hausdorff measures, area and coarea formulas for Lipschitz mappings and related change-of-variable formulas, and Sobolev functions and functions of bounded variation. The text provides complete proofs of many key results omitted from other books, including Besicovitch's Covering Theorem, Rademacher's Theorem (on the differentiability a.e. of Lipschitz functions), the Area and Coarea Formulas, the precise structure of Sobolev and BV functions, the precise structure of sets of finite perimeter, and Alexandro's Theorem (on the twice differentiability a.e. of convex functions). Topics are carefully selected and the proofs succinct, but complete, which makes this book ideal reading for applied mathematicians and graduate students in applied mathematics.
