Sufficiently wide strips uniquely minimize the planar periodic fractional perimeter

Abstract

We study the fractional perimeter per period of planar sets with prescribed horizontal period and area per period. We prove that sufficiently wide strips are the unique minimizers among all measurable competitors, up to vertical translation and null sets. For period one, a half-width of at least $14$ suffices for every fractional exponent $s\in(0,1)$. The proof first replaces each vertical section by a centered interval of the same length. We then establish a quantitative lower bound for the perimeter excess in terms of the deviation of the resulting half-width profile from its mean. The main difficulty is that the perimeter of a strip is a concave function of its width. We show that, at large mean width, the interaction cost of unequal sections dominates the corresponding concavity deficit and leaves a positive remainder for every nonconstant profile. Estimates at small and large horizontal separations make the sufficient width bound independent of $s$. The argument applies to arbitrary nonnegative integrable profiles, including unbounded profiles and profiles that vanish on sets of positive measure.