Isometric Immersions and Weak Solutions to the Darboux Equation

Abstract

We study the Darboux equation, a fundamental PDE arising in the theory of isometric immersions of two-dimensional Riemannian manifolds into $\mathbb{R}^3$, in the low-regularity regime. We introduce a notion of weak solution for $u\in C^{1,\theta}$ with $\theta>1/2$, and show that the classical correspondence between solutions of the Darboux equation and isometric immersions remains valid in this regime. The key ingredient is an extension of the classical flatness criterion to H\"older continuous metrics, achieved via an analysis of a weak notion of Gaussian curvature.