Regularity of Neumann solutions to an elliptic free boundary problem

Abstract

We examine the regularity properties of solutions to an elliptic free boundary problem, near a Neumann fixed boundary. Consider a nonnegative function u which minimizes the functional ... on a bounded, convex domain ... This function u is harmonic in its positive phase and satisfies ... along the free boundary ... , in a weak sense. We prove various basic properties of such a minimizer near the portion of the boundary ... on which ... weakly. These results include up-to-the boundary gradient estimates on harmonic functions with Neumann boundary conditions on convex domains. The main result is that the minimizer u is Lipschitz continuous. The proof in dimension 2 is by means of conformal mapping as well as a simplified monotonicity formula. In higher dimensions, the proof is via a maximum principle estimate for ...