Generic properties in free boundary problems

Xavier Fernández-Real, Hui Yu

Published 2023-08-25Version 1

In this work, we show the generic uniqueness of minimizers for a large class of energies, including the Alt-Caffarelli and Alt-Phillips functionals. We then prove the generic regularity of free boundaries for minimizers of the one-phase Alt-Caffarelli and Alt-Phillips functionals, for a monotone family of boundary data $\{\varphi_t\}_{t\in(-1,1)}$. More precisely, we show that for a co-countable subset of $\{\varphi_t\}_{t\in(-1,1)}$, minimizers have smooth free boundaries in $\mathbb{R}^5$ for the Alt-Caffarelli and in $\mathbb{R}^3$ for the Alt-Phillips functional. In general dimensions, we show that the singular set is one dimension smaller than expected for almost every boundary datum in $\{\varphi_t\}_{t\in(-1,1)}$.