Boundary behavior of limit-interfaces for the Allen-Cahn equation on Riemannian manifolds with Neumann boundary condition

Abstract

We study the boundary behavior of any limit-interface arising from a sequence of general critical points of the Allen-Cahn energy functionals on a smooth bounded domain. Given any such sequence with uniform energy bounds, we prove that the limit-interface is a free boundary varifold which is integer rectifiable up to the boundary. This extends earlier work of Hutchinson and Tonegawa on the interior regularity of such limit-interface. A key novelty in our result is that no convexity assumption of the boundary is required and it is valid even when the limit-interface clusters near the boundary. Moreover, our arguments are local and thus works in the Riemannian setting. This work provides the first step towards the regularity theory for the Allen-Cahn min-max theory for free boundary minimal hypersurfaces, which was developed in the Almgren-Pitts setting by the first-named author and Zhou.