Paper detail

A shape optimization problem for the $p$-Laplacian

It is known that the torsional rigidity for a punctured ball, with the puncture having the shape of a ball, is minimum when the balls are concentric and the first eigenvalue for the Dirichlet Laplacian for such domains is also a maximum in this case. These results have been obtained by Ashbaugh and Chatelain (private communication), Harrell et. al., by Kesavan and, by Ramm and Shivakumar. In this paper we extend these results to the case of $p$-Laplacian for $1 < p < \infty$. For proving these results, we follow the same line of ideas as in the aforementioned articles, namely, study the sign of the shape derivative using the moving plane method and comparison principles. In the process, we obtain some interesting new side results such as the Hadamard perturbation formula for the torsional rigidity functional for the Dirichlet $p$-Laplacian, the existence and uniqueness result for a nonlinear pde and some extensions of known comparison results for nonlinear pdes.