Zeitschrift f ur Analysis und ihre Anwendungen

Journal for Analysis and its Applications

Volume 22 (2003), No. 4, 767778
Absolutely Continuous Functions
of Several Variables
and Quasiconformal Mappings
S. Hencl
Abstract. We prove that functions with bounded n-variation and n-absolutely con-
tinuous functions of n-variables in the sense of [4] are stable under quasiconformal
mappings. The class of quasiconformal mappings is the best possible since every
homeomorphism which induces a bounded operator between BV
n
spaces is a qua-
siconformal mapping.
Keywords: Absolute continuity in several variables, quasiconformal maps
AMS subject classication: 26B30
1. Introduction
Absolutely continuous functions of one variable are admissible transforma-
tions for the change of variables in Lebesgue integral. Recently J. Mal y [6] in-
troduced a class of n-absolutely continuous functions giving an n-dimensional
analogue of the notion of absolute continuity from this point of view. We study
a modied class of n-absolutely continuous functions suggested by Zajcek
which was introduced in [4]. Our aim is to nd the largest class of transfor-
mations which preserves n-absolute continuity.
Suppose that R
n
is an open set and 0 < < 1. We say that a
function f : R
m
is n, -absolutely continuous if for each > 0 there is a
> 0 such that, for each disjoint nite family {B
i
(x
i
, r
i
)} of balls in ,

i
L
n
(B
i
) < =

i
_
osc
B
i
(x
i
,r
i
)
f
_
n
< .
S. Hencl: Dept. Math. & Stat., P.O. Box 35 (MaD), FIN-40014 Univ. of Jyvaskyl a;
hencl@karlin.m.cuni.cz
This research has been supported in part by the Research Project MSM 113200007
from the Czech Ministry of Education, Grant No. 201/00/0767 from the Grant
Agency of the Czech republic (GA

CR)
ISSN 0232-2064 / $ 2.50 c Heldermann Verlag Berlin
768 S. Hencl
Absolute continuity from [6] coincides with n, 1-absolute continuity. It is
proved in [4, 6] that n, -absolute continuity implies continuity, weak dif-
ferentiability with gradient in L
n
, dierentiability almost everywhere and a
formula on change of variables.
It was shown by Csornyei [1] that there exists a 2, 1-absolutely continuous
function with respect to balls, which is not a function of this type with respect
to cubes, where the concept in question is dened by an obvious modication
to the denition given above. On the contrary, n, -absolute continuity does
not depend on the shape of the ball in the denition for 0 < < 1 (see [4]
for details). The class of absolutely continuous functions also does not depend
on the precise value of if 0 < < 1 (see Theorem 3.5 below). From this
point of view it is more natural to work with the new denition (i.e. with
0 < < 1).
Given a measurable set A R
n
and a function f : A R
m
, we dene
the n, -variation of f on A by
V
n

(f, A) = sup
_

i
_
osc
B(x
i
,r
i
)
f
_
n
:
{B(x
i
, r
i
)} is a disjoint
nite family of balls in A
_
.
We denote by BV
n

() the class of all functions such that V

n

(f, ) < ,
dene the space AC
n

() as the family of all n, -absolutely continuous func-

tions in BV
n

() and write AC
n
,loc
for the class of all functions f such that
f AC
n

(K) for every compact set K .

We prove in Section 3 that if R
n
(n 2) is an open set, 0 < < 1
and F : R
n
is a quasiconformal mapping, then
(i) f BV
n

() f F
1
BV
n

(F())
(ii) f AC
n

() f F
1
AC
n

(F()).
This extends the result from [4] where F was a bi-Lipschitz mapping. Note
that the class AC
n
1
is not stable even under bi-Lipschitz mappings (see [5] for
details).
Using ideas from [2] we prove the following result in Section 4:
Let 0 < 1 and n 2. If a homeomorphism F : R
n
induces a
bounded operator from BV
n

(F()) to BV
n

(), then F is a quasiconformal

mapping.
It follows that the results in Section 3 are sharp.
Absolute Continuity and Quasiconformal Mappings 769
2. Preliminaries
Throughout the paper we consider an open set R
n
(n > 1). We denote
- by L
n
(A) or |A| the n-dimensional Lebesgue measure of a set A R
n
- by a real number 0 < < 1
- by B(x, r) the n-dimensional Euclidean open ball with center x and di-
ameter r (throughout the paper we use the letter B for balls only)
- by B(x, r) the corresponding closed ball
- B = B(x, r) for a given ball B = B(x, r)
- by S(x, r) = {y R
n
: |x y| = r} a sphere
- by osc
A
f the oscillation of f : R
m
over the set A , which is the
diameter of f(A)
- by F

(x) for a mapping F : R

n
the Jacobi matrix of all partial
derivatives of F at x
- by F the weak (distributional) derivative
- by J
F
(x) the determinant of the Jacobi matrix of F(x)
- by W
1,p
() and W
1,p
loc
() the Sobolev spaces.
A mapping F : R
n
is called a homeomorphism if there exists its inverse
F
1
and both F and F
1
are continuous. We write f F or F

f for the
composition of the functions F : R
n
and f : F() R
m
; that is (f
F)(x) = (F

f)(x) = f(F(x)) for every x . We say that a homeomorphism

F : R
n
induces a bounded operator F

: BV
n

(F()) BV
n

() if
there is a constant C > 0 such that V
n

(F

f, ) C V
n

(f, F()) for every

f BV
n

(F()).
We use the convention that C denotes a generic positive constant which
may change from expression to expression.
3. Stability of AC
n

under quasiconformal mappings

In this section we will prove that classes of functions AC
n

and BV
n

are stable
with respect to quasiconformal change of variables.
Denition 3.1. Let 1 K < . A mapping F : R
n
is called
K-quasiconformal, if it satises the following properties:
(i) F is a homeomorphism
(ii) F W
1,n
loc
(, R
n
)
(iii) |F(x)|
n
K|J
F
(x)| for almost every x .
We say that a mapping F is quasiconformal, if there is K < such that f is
K-quasiconformal.
For the history and basic properties of quasiconformal mappings we refer
the reader to [8].
770 S. Hencl
Denition 3.2. A function F : R
n
is -quasisymmetric if there is
a homeomorphism : [0, ) [0, ) such that, for every a, b, x and
0,
|a x| |b x| = |F(a) F(x)| ()|F(b) F(x)|.
The following theorem [6: Theorem 2.4] states that quasiconformal map-
pings are locally quasisymmetric.
Theorem 3.3. Suppose n 2, F : R
n
is a K-quasiconformal
mapping and x
0
, > 1, r > 0 and B(x
0
, r) . Then F|
B(x
0
,r)
is
-quasisymmetric where depends only on n, K and .
Using this theorem for = 2 and a quasiconformal mapping F : R
n
,
there is 0 <
0
< 1 such that, for a xed x and r <

0
2
dist(x, ),
sup
{a:|xa|r}
|F(x) F(a)|
1
4
inf
{b:|xb|=
r

0
}
|F(x) F(b)|. (3.1)
Lemma 3.4. Let 0 < 1, f BV
n

() and f AC
n
,loc
(). Then
f AC
n

().
Proof. Fix > 0. It is not dicult to see from the denition of n, -
variation that we can nd a nite collection of pairwise disjoint balls B(x
i
, r
i
)
such that B(x
i
, r
i
) and

i
_
osc
B(x
i
,r
i
)
f
_
n
> V
n

(f, ) .
Since is open and B(x
i
, r
i
) , we can nd k N such that for

k
=
_
x : |x| < k and dist (x, ) >
1
k
_
(3.2)
we have B(x
i
, r
i
)
k
for each i and therefore V
n

(f,
k
) > V
n

(f, ) .
From this fact and V
n

(
k
) +V
n

(\
k
) V
n

() we obtain V
n

(\
k
) < .
For a given we can nd
1
from the denition of AC
n

(
k+1
) for f. Put
= min
_

1
, L
n
_
B
_
0,
1
2k(k + 1)
___
. (3.3)
Fix pairwise disjoint balls B
1
, . . . , B
l
in such that

l
i=1
L
n
(B
i
) < . From
(3.3) we obtain diam(B
i
) <
1
k

1
k+1
(i {1, . . . , l}). Thus (3.2) gives that
Absolute Continuity and Quasiconformal Mappings 771
either B
i

k+1
or B
i
\
k
for every i. Hence we obtain from the
denition of
1
and k that

i
osc
n
B
i
f

i:B
i

k+1
osc
n
B
i
f +

i:B
i
\
k
osc
n
B
i
f

i:B
i

k+1
osc
n
B
i
f +V
n

( \
k
)
+
= 2
and the proof is nished
The following theorem [3: Theorem 3.1] gives us the opportunity to use
any (0, 1) in the denition of the classes AC
n

and BV
n

. We will use this

fact in the proof of Theorem 3.6.
Theorem 3.5. Let 0 <
1
<
2
< 1 and f : R
m
. Then BV
n

1
() =
BV
n

2
() and AC
n

1
() = AC
n

2
().
Now we can prove the main result of this section.
Theorem 3.6. Let n 2 and 0 < < 1. Suppose that the mapping
F : R
n
is K-quasiconformal and f : R. Then:
(i) f F
1
BV
n

(F()) = f BV
n

()
(ii) f F
1
AC
n

(F()) = f AC
n

().
Proof. Let us rst suppose that f F
1
BV
n

(F()). Thanks to
Theorem 3.5 we can suppose that =
1
2
. We will prove that f BV
n

0
2
().
Recall that the constant 0 <
0
< 1 comes from (3.1).
Suppose that B
i
= B(x
i
, r
i
) are pairwise disjoint balls. Clearly,
F
_
B
_
x
i
,

0
2
r
i
__
B
_
F(x
i
), osc
B(x
i
,

0
2
r
i
)
F
_
. (3.4)
Thanks to (3.1), for r =

0
2
r
i
and x = x
i
we have
B
_
F(x
i
), 2osc
B(x
i
,

0
2
r
i
)
F
_
B
_
F(x
i
), 4 sup
{a:|x
i
a|

0
2
r
i
}
|F(x
i
) F(a)|
_
B
_
F(x
i
), inf
{b:|x
i
b|=
1

0
2
r
i
}
|F(x
i
) F(b)|
_
F
_
B
_
x
i
,
1
2
r
i
__
.
(3.5)
772 S. Hencl
Hence the balls

B
i
= B
_
F(x
i
), 2osc
B(x
i
,

0
2
r
i
)
F
_
are pairwise disjoint in F().
Thus (3.4) gives us

i
osc
n
B(x
i
,

0
2
r
i
)
f =

i
osc
n
F(B(x
i
,

0
2
r
i
))
f F
1

i
osc
n
B(F(x
i
),osc
B(x
i
,

0
2
r
i
)
F)
f F
1
=

i
osc
n
1
2
B
i
f F
1
V
n
1
2
_
f F
1
, F()
_
.
(3.6)
It follows that V
n

0
2
(f, ) V
n
1
2
(f F
1
, F()) < .
Now let us suppose that f F
1
AC
n

(F()). As before we can assume

that =
1
2
. From the conclusions above we obtain f BV
n

0
2
(). Thanks to
Lemma 3.4 and Theorem 3.5 it is enough to prove that f AC
n

0
2
,loc
().
Fix > 0 and

such that

. Choose
1
from the denition of
AC
n
1
2
() for function f F
1
. By [4: Theorem 4.3], quasiconformal mappings
are locally absolutely continuous and therefore F AC
n

). Hence for a
given
1
=

1
2
n
we can choose
2
from the denition of AC
n

0
2
(

) for the
function F.
Suppose that the balls B
i
= B(x
i
, r
i
)

are pairwise disjoint and

i
L
n
(B
i
) <
2
. As before we obtain (3.4) and (3.5). Therefore the balls

B
i
= B
_
F(x
i
), 2osc
B(x
i
,

0
2
r
i)
F
_
are pairwise disjoint in F(

). Further,

i
L
n
(B
i
) <
2
and the denition of

2
give us

i
L
n
(

B
i
) = 2
n

i
osc
n
B(x
i
,

0
2
r
i)
F 2
n

1
= 2
n

1
2
n
=
1
.
Analogously to (3.6) we obtain from the denition of
1
that

i
osc
n
B(x
i
,

0
2
r
i
)
f

i
osc
n
1
2
B
i
f F
1
<
and the proof is nished
The inverse mapping to a quasiconformal mapping is also quasiconformal
[7: Corollary 13.3] and hence we have the following
Absolute Continuity and Quasiconformal Mappings 773
Corollary 3.7. Let 0 < < 1, n 2 and let f : R
m
. Suppose that
F : R
n
is a quasiconformal mapping. Then:
(i) f BV
n

() f F
1
BV
n

(F())
(ii) f AC
n

() f F
1
AC
n

(F()).
The following elementary example shows that the assumption f BV
n

from the denition of the class AC

n

is important in Theorem 3.6.

Example 3.8. Let 0 < < 1. There exists a domain R
2
and a
1-quasiconformal mapping F : R
2
such that f F
1
is 2, -absolutely
continuous on F() but f is not 2, -absolutely continuous on .
Indeed, set =
_
[x, y] : x > 0
_
and F(x, y) =
_
x
x
2
+y
2
,
y
x
2
+y
2

. In other
words, for z C we dene F(z) =
1
z
(thus also F
1
(z) =
1
z
). It is well known
that the mapping
1
z
is conformal and hence also 1-quasiconformal [7: Theorem
8.1]. Plainly, F() = {[x, y] : x > 0}. Put

f(x) =

k=1
max
_
0, 1 dist(x, [2k, 0])
_
.
Clearly,

f is a Lipschitz function with Lipschitz constant 1 on F() and hence
also 2, -absolutely continuous.
Set f =

f F (hence

f = f F
1
) and B
k
= B([2k, 0], 1). Properties of
inversion and easy computation gives us

B
k
:= F
1
(B
k
) = B
__
1
2k+1
+
1
2k1
2
, 0
_
,
1
2k1

1
2k+1
2
_
for every k N. From osc
B
k
f 1 and diam

B
k
0 we obtain that f is not
2, -absolutely continuous.
It is not dicult to prove that the condition L
n
() < guarantees that
any n, -absolutely continuous function f on satises f BV
n

(). Hence
such an example can exist only if L
n
(F()) = in view of Theorem 3.6.
4. Continuous homeomorphisms F : BV
n

BV
n

In this section we will use ideas of Goldstein, Gurov and Romanov [2]. They
proved that a homeomorphism F : R
n
which induces a bounded operator
from W
1,n
(F()) to W
1,n
() is a quasiconformal mapping (see [2] for details
and [3] for the history of similar problems).
Let us denote F

v
(x) = lim
r0
|F(B(x,r))|
|B(x,r)|
. We shall need the following
connection between F

v
and the Jacobian of F [7: Theorems 24.2 and 24.4].
774 S. Hencl
Theorem 4.1. Let F : R
n
be a homeomorphism. Then:
(i) F

v
< almost everywhere.
(ii) F

v
is a measurable function.
(iii) For each measurable set A , |F(A)|
_
A
F

v
(x) dx.
(iv) If F is dierentiable at x and J
F
(x) is the Jacobi matrix of F at x,
then F

v
= |J
F
(x)|.
Lemma 4.2. If a homeomorphism F : R
n
induces the bounded oper-
ator F

: BV
n

(F()) BV
n

(), then F is dierentiable almost everywhere

on .
Proof. Fix R > 0. The mapping F is a homeomorphism and therefore
the set
A
R
=
_
x : F(x) B(0, R)
_
= F
1
(B(0, R))
is open. Fix 1 i n. Plainly, there is a Lipschitz function f : F() R
such that
f(x) =
_
x
i
for x F(), |x| < R
0 for x F(), |x| > R + 1.
Hence f BV
n

(F()) implies F

f = f F BV
n

(). If |F(x)| < R, then

f F = F
i
(x). Thus F
i
(x) BV
n

(A
R
). Functions from BV
n

(A) are dieren-

tiable almost everywhere on A for every open set A (see [6: Theorem 3.3] and
[4: Theorem 3.4] for details) and hence F
i
is dierentiable almost everywhere
on A
R
. Since A
R
as R we obtain that F
i
is dierentiable almost
everywhere on
In the proof of Theorem 4.4 below we will need the following elementary
lemma [2: Lemma 3.5]:
Lemma 4.3. Let F : R
n
be a continuous mapping and G R
k
.
Suppose that {K
y
}
yG
is a family of pairwise disjoint compact sets such that
K
y
F(). Then L
n
(F
1
(K
y
)) = 0 for all y G except possibly a countable
subset of G.
Theorem 4.4. Let 0 < 1 and n 2. If a homeomorphism F :
R
n
induces the bounded operator F

: BV
n

(F()) BV
n

(), then
F W
1,n
loc
() and there is a number K such that
|F
i
|
n
KF

v
(x)
for almost all x and for all i = 1, 2, . . . , n.
Proof. In this proof we will follow the ideas from [2: Theorem 3.6]. By
Theorem 4.1, F

v
(x) < a.e. Fix > 0 and a point x
0
such that
Absolute Continuity and Quasiconformal Mappings 775
F

v
(x
0
) < . There is r
0
such that for all r (0, r
0
) we have
|F(B(x
0
, 2r))| (F

v
(x
0
) +)|B(x
0
, 2r)|
= (F

v
(x
0
) +)2
n
|B(x
0
, r)|.
(4.1)
Set M = (F

v
(x
0
) + )2
n
. Let us call a cube Q h-regular if all its edges are
parallel to the coordinate axes, the length of the edge is h and every vertex has
the form [k
1
h, . . . , k
n
h] where k
1
, . . . , k
n
are integers. Fix r < r
0
and choose
h > 0 such that
h <
1
2

n
dist
_
F(S(x
0
, 2r)), F(S(x
0
, r))
_
.
Let A be the union of all h-regular cubes Q such that QF(B(x
0
, r)) = . It
is evident that
F(B(x
0
, r)) A F(B(x
0
, 2r)).
Fix j {1, . . . , n} and let us focus on the j-th coordinate. Denote the hy-
perplanes x
j
= th by L
t
. The hyperplanes L
m
(m an integer) divide R
n
into
layers
Z
m
=
_
x R
n
: mh < x
j
< (m+ 1)h
_
.
Put A
m
= Z
m
A.
For every A
m
we construct three functions

m,1
= x
j
mh

m,2
= (m+ 1)h x
j

m,3
=
h
2
dist
_
P
j
(x), P
j
(A
m
)
_
.
Here P
j
: R
n
R
n1
j
is the orthogonal projection of R
n
onto R
n1
j
. Consider
the functions

m
= max
_
0, min{
m,1
,
m,2
,
m,3
}
_
and =

m
.
Put
E =
_
x G : (x) is not dierentiable at x
_
.
It follows from the denition of that:
(1) supp() F(B(x
0
, 2r))
(2) is Lipschitz with constant 1
(3) BV
n

(F())
(4) is dierentiable almost everywhere
776 S. Hencl
(5) (x) = x
j
+ const in all components of the set F(B(x
0
, r)) \ E.
The set E F(B(x
0
, r)) belongs to a nite union of hyperplanes L
t
1
, . . . , L
t
s
where 2t
i
is an integer. By Lemma 4.3, for almost all small translations
y
parallel to the axis x
j
we have

F
1
_

y
_

_
i=
Li
2
_
F(B(x
0
, r))
_

= 0.
Thus we can assume without loss of generality that

F
1
_
E F(B(x
0
, r))
_

= 0. (4.2)
Otherwise it is possible to change the j-th coordinate of the point [0, . . . , 0]
at the beginning of the construction of .
By the assumption of the theorem, F

= F BV
n

(). It follows from

(5) and (4.2) that ( F)(x) = F
j
(x) +const for almost all x B(x
0
, r). It
is easy to see from the proof of [5: Theorem 3.2] that BV
n

() is continuously
embedded into W
1,n
(). These two facts give us
_
B(x
0
,r)
|(F
j
(x))|
n
dx
_

|( F)|
n
dx
CV
n

( F, )
= CV
n

(F

(), ).
(4.3)
Since F

is continuous we have
V
n

(F

(), ) CV
n

(, ). (4.4)
The function is Lipschitz with constant 1 and hence
osc
n
B(x,s)
(2s)
n
= C|B(x, s)| (4.5)
for each x and every s. Thanks to (4.5), the continuity of and supp()
F(B(x
0
, 2r)) we have
V
n

(, ) C|F(B(x
0
, 2r))|. (4.6)
From (4.3), (4.4) and (4.6) it follows that
_
B(x
0
,r)
|(F
j
(x))|
n
dx C|F(B(x
0
, 2r))|.
Absolute Continuity and Quasiconformal Mappings 777
By (4.1),
_
B(x
0
,r)
|(F
j
(x))|
n
dx CM|B(x
0
, r)|.
Hence
limsup
r0
1
|B(x
0
, r)|
_
B(x
0
,r)
|(F
j
(x))|
n
dx CM.
The Lebesgue Theorem gives us |F
j
(x
0
)|
n
C(F

v
(x
0
) + ) for almost all
x
0
. Letting 0 we obtain
|F
j
(x
0
)|
n
CF

v
(x
0
) (4.7)
for almost all x
0
. For every compact set K we obtain from Theorem
4.1 and (4.7) that
_
K
|F
j
(x)|
n
dx C
_
K
F

v
(x) dx C|F(K)| < .
Thus F W
1,n
loc
()
Thanks to Lemma 4.2 and Theorem 4.1/(iv) we obtain the following
Corollary 4.5. Let 0 < 1 and R
n
(n 2). Each homeo-
morphism F : R
n
that induces a bounded operator from BV
n

(F()) to
BV
n

() is quasiconformal.
Acknowledgement. The author wishes to express his thanks to Jan
Mal y for suggesting the problem and for many stimulating conversations.
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778 S. Hencl
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Received 04.02.2003