On minima of a functional of the gradient: Upper and lower solutions

This paper studies a scalar minimization problem with an integral functional of the gradient under affine boundary conditions. A new approach is proposed using a minimal and a maximal solution to the convexified problem. We prove a density result: any relaxed solution continuously depending on boundary data may be approximated uniformly by solutions of the nonconvex problem keeping continuity relative to data. We also consider solutions to the nonconvex problem having Lipschitz dependence on boundary data with the best Lipschitz constant.