One-phase free-boundary problems with degeneracy

Abstract: In this paper, we study local minimizers of a degenerate version of the Alt-Caffarelli functional. Specifically, we consider local minimizers of the functional $J_{Q}(u, \Omega):= \int_{\Omega} |\nabla u|^2 + Q(x)^2\chi_{{u>0}}dx$ where $Q(x) = \text{dist}(x, \Gamma)^{\gamma}$ for $\gamma>0$ and $\Gamma$ a $C^{1, \alpha}$ submanifold of dimension $0 \le k \le n-1$. We show that the free boundary may be decomposed into a rectifiable set, on which we prove upper Minkowski content estimates, and a degenerate cusp set about which little can be said in general with the current techniques. Work in the theory of water waves and the Stokes wave serves as our inspiration, however the main thrust of this paper is to study the geometry of the free boundary for degenerate one-phase Bernoulli free-boundary problems in the context of local minimizers.