Boundary regularity for the distance functions, and the eikonal equation

Abstract

We study the gain in regularity of the distance to the boundary of a domain in $\mathbb R^m$. In particular, we show that if the signed distance function happens to be merely differentiable in a neighborhood of a boundary point, it and the boundary have to be $\mathcal C^{1,1}$ regular. Conversely, we study the regularity of the distance function under regularity hypotheses of the boundary. Along the way, we point out that any solution to the eikonal equation, differentiable everywhere in a domain of the Euclidean space, admits a gradient which is locally Lipschitz.