A spiral interface with positive Alt–Caffarelli–Friedman limit at the origin

Abstract

We give an example of a pair of nonnegative subharmonic functions with disjoint support for which the Alt–Caffarelli–Friedman monotonicity formula has strictly positive limit at the origin, and yet the interface between their supports lacks a (unique) tangent there. This clarifies a remark of Caffarelli and Salsa (A geometric approach to free boundary problems, 2005) that the positivity of the limit of the ACF formula implies unique tangents; this is true under some additional assumptions, but false in general. In our example, blow-ups converge to the expected piecewise linear two-plane function along subsequences, but the limiting function depends on the subsequence due to the spiraling nature of the interface.