Stationary points of conformally invariant polyconvex energies

Abstract

We consider polyconvex integrands that are conformally invariant and frame indifferent. In two dimensions, we prove that the corresponding stationary points are smooth outside a discrete set; this result is new even for minimizers. We further show that every orientation-preserving stationary point is $C^1$. Since such solutions are closely related to Teichmüller-type variational problems, our result also confirms, in the case of integrands with linear growth in the distortion, a conjecture of Astala, Iwaniec, Martin, and Onninen from 2005.