An Optimization Problem in Heat Conduction With Volume Constraint and Double Obstacles

Abstract

We consider the optimization problem of minimizing $\int_{\mathbb{R}^n}|\nabla u|^2\,\mathrm{d}x$ with double obstacles $\phi\leq u\leq\psi$ a.e. in $D$ and a constraint on the volume of $\{u>0\}\setminus\overline{D}$, where $D\subset\mathbb{R}^n$ is a bounded domain. By studying a penalization problem that achieves the constrained volume for small values of penalization parameter, we prove that every minimizer is $C^{1,1}$ locally in $D$ and Lipschitz continuous in $\mathbb{R}^n$ and that the free boundary $\partial\{u>0\}\setminus\overline{D}$ is smooth. Moreover, when the boundary of $D$ has a plane portion, we show that the minimizer is $C^{1,\frac{1}{2}}$ up to the plane portion.