Extremal functions for Morrey's inequality in convex domains

Ryan Hynd, Erik Lindgren

Published 2016-09-26Version 1

For a bounded domain $\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^n$ and $p>n$, Morrey's inequality implies that there is $c>0$ such that $$ c\|u\|^p_{\infty}\le \int_\Omega|Du|^pdx $$ for each $u$ belonging to the Sobolev space $W^{1,p}_0(\Omega)$. We show that the ratio of any two extremal functions is constant provided that $\Omega$ is convex. We also explain why this property fails to hold in general and verify that convexity is not a necessary condition for a domain to have this property. As a by product, we obtain the uniqueness of an optimization problem involving the Green's function for the $p$-Laplacian.