Topics in the Calculus of Variations

This work illustrates two basic principles in the calculus of variations - the questions of existence of solutions, and closely related, the problem of regularity of minimizers. Chapter one studies variational problems for nonquadratic energy functionals defined on suitable classes of vector-valued functions where nonlinear constraints are also incorporated. Problems of this type arise for mappings between Riemannian manifolds or in nonlinear elasticity. Using direct methods for the existence of generalized minimizers is rather easy to establish, and it is then shown that regularity holds up to a set of small measure. Chapter two contains a short introduction into geometric measure theory, which serves as a basis for developing an existence theory for (generalized) manifolds with prescribed mean curvature form and boundary in arbitrary dimensions and co-dimensions. A major aspect of the book is that it concentrates on techniques, and presents methods which turn out to be useful for applications in regularity theorems, as well as for existence problems.