Well-posedness and Regularity for a Polyconvex Energy

Abstract: We prove the existence, uniqueness, and regularity of minimizers of a polyconvex functional in two and three dimensions, which corresponds to the $H^1$ projection of measure-preserving maps. Our result introduces a new criteria on the uniqueness of the minimizer, based on the smallness of the lagrange multiplier. No estimate on the second derivatives of the pressure is needed to get a unique global minimizer. As an application, we construct a minimizing movement scheme to construct $L^r$ solutions of the Navier-Stokes equation for a short time interval.