arXiv2026
This is the first part of a project concerning the regularity of the free boundary of a function, where the free boundary depends on the gradient of the function. We study the minimizer of the expression \begin{equation*} J(u) : = \int_{B_1} F(\nabla u) \ dx, \end{equation*} where $F(x)$ is a uniformly convex function whose second derivatives might jump at $|x|=1$. This results in an Euler-Lagrange equation that varies over the free boundary, which we define as $$ \Gamma = \partial \{x \in B_1: |\nabla u| >1 \} \cap \partial \{x \in B_1: |\nabla u| <1 \}. $$ We consider two-phase flat points for which the second derivatives of $F$ jump over $\Gamma$. In this paper, we show that under some regularity and non-degeneracy assumptions, a minimizer $u$ can be expressed as $$ u(x)= a + \nu \cdot x+ \delta p(x) + \delta \epsilon q(x), $$ where $a \in \mathbb{R}$, $\nu \in \mathbb{R}^n$, $0 < \delta, \epsilon << 1$. Here $p$ is a $C^1$ function, which consists of one polynomial in the upper half ball and another polynomial in the lower half ball. The function $q$ is a rest term with bounded $L^2$ norm. Furthermore, assuming that we have a sequence, $u^j$, of minimizers, we show that $q^j$ converges weakly to a function $q^0$ that satisfies a certain PDE. In addition, we show that $q^0$ is $C^3$ in $B_r^+$ and $B_r^-$, respectively, for $0<r<1$. This is the main result of this paper which is intended to be used to show regularity of the free boundary.