Existence of optimal domains for the helicity maximisation problem among domains satisfying a uniform ball condition

Abstract

In the present work we present a general framework which guarantees the existence of optimal domains for isoperimetric problems within the class of C1,1-regular domains satisfying a uniform ball condition as long as the desired objective function satisfies certain properties. We then verify that the helicity isoperimetric problem studied in [Cantarella et al., J. Math. Phys. 41, 5615 (2000)] satisfies the conditions of our framework and hence establish the existence of optimal domains within the given class of domains. We additionally use the same framework to prove the existence of optimal domains among uniform C1,1-domains for a first curl eigenvalue problem which has been studied recently for other classes of domains in [Enciso et al., Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 377, 4519–4540 (2024)].