A variational theory for integral functionals involving finite-horizon fractional gradients

The center of interest in this work are variational problems with integral functionals depending on nonlocal gradients with finite horizon that correspond to truncated versions of the Riesz fractional gradient. We contribute several new aspects to both the existence theory of these problems and the study of their asymptotic behavior. Our overall proof strategy builds on finding suitable translation operators that allow to switch between the three types of gradients: classical, fractional, and nonlocal. These provide useful technical tools for transferring results from one setting to the other. Based on this approach, we show that quasiconvexity, which is the natural convexity notion in the classical calculus of variations, gives a necessary and sufficient condition for the weak lower semicontinuity of the nonlocal functionals as well. As a consequence of a general G -convergence statement, we obtain relaxation and homogenization results. The analysis of the limiting behavior for varying fractional parameters yields, in particular, a rigorous localization with a classical local limit model.