On the failure of the chain rule for the divergence of Sobolev vector fields

Abstract

We construct a large class of incompressible vector fields with Sobolev regularity, in dimension $d \geq 3$, for which the chain rule problem has a negative answer. In particular, for any renormalization map $\beta$ (satisfying suitable assumptions) and any (distributional) renormalization defect $T$ of the form $T = {\rm div}\, h$, where $h$ is an $L^1$ vector field, we can construct an incompressible Sobolev vector field $u \in W^{1, \tilde p}$ and a density $\rho \in L^p$ for which ${\rm div}\, (\rho u) =0$ but ${\rm div}\, (\beta(\rho) u) = T$, provided $1/p + 1/\tilde p \geq 1 + 1/(d-1)$