Quantitative flatness results and BV-estimates for stable nonlocal minimal surfaces

Abstract

We establish quantitative properties of minimizers and stable sets for nonlocal interaction functionals, including the s-fractional perimeter as a particular case. On the one hand, we establish universal BV-estimates in every dimension n≥2 for stable sets. Namely, we prove that any stable set in B1 has finite classical perimeter in B1/2, with a universal bound. This nonlocal result is new even in the case of s-perimeters and its local counterpart (for classical stable minimal surfaces) was known only for simply connected two-dimensional surfaces immersed in R3. On the other hand, we prove quantitative flatness estimates for minimizers and stable sets in low dimensions n=2,3. More precisely, we show that a stable set in BR, with R large, is very close in measure to being a half space in B1 ---with a quantitative estimate on the measure of the symmetric difference. As a byproduct, we obtain new classification results for stable sets in the whole plane.