Rigidity of a Non-elliptic Differential Inclusion Related to the Aviles–Giga Conjecture

In this paper we prove sharp regularity for a differential inclusion into a set $$K\subset {{\mathbb {R}}}^{2\times 2}$$ that arises in connection with the Aviles–Giga functional. The set K is not elliptic, and in that sense our main result goes beyond Sverak’s regularity theorem on elliptic differential inclusions. It can also be reformulated as a sharp regularity result for a critical nonlinear Beltrami equation. In terms of the Aviles–Giga energy, our main result implies that zero energy states coincide (modulo a canonical transformation) with solutions of the differential inclusion into K. This opens new perspectives towards understanding energy concentration properties for Aviles–Giga: quantitative estimates for the stability of zero energy states can now be approached from the point of view of stability estimates for differential inclusions. All these reformulations of our results are strong improvements upon a recent work by the last two authors, Lorent and Peng, where the link between the differential inclusion into K and the Aviles–Giga functional was first observed and used. Our proof relies moreover on new observations concerning the algebraic structure of entropies.