Variational competition between full Hessian and its determinant for convex functions

Abstract

We prove upper and lower bounds for a variational functional for convex functions satisfying certain boundary conditions on a sector of the unit ball in two dimensions. The functional contains two terms: The full Hessian and its determinant, where the former is treated as a small perturbation in the space $L^2$ and the latter as the leading-order term, in the negative Sobolev space $W^{-2,2}$. We point out how this setting is motivated by problems in nonlinear elasticity, and obtain a corollary for a variational problem based on the so-called F\"oppl-von-K\'arm\'an energy.