Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2009
Motivated by the study of multidimensional control problems of Dieudonné-Rashevsky type, we raise the question how to understand to notion of quasiconvexity for a continuous function f with a convex body K $\subset \mathbb{R}^{nm}$ instead of the whole space $\mathbb{R}^{nm}$ as the range of definition. In the present paper, we trace the consequences of an infinite extension of f outside K, and thus study quasiconvex functions which are allowed to take the value +∞. As an appropriate envelope, we introduce and investigate the lower semicontinuous quasiconvex envelope $f^{(qc)} (v) = {\rm sup} \{ \,g(v)\, \vert \,g : \mathbb{R}^{nm} \rightarrow \mathbb{R} \cup \{ + \infty \}$ quasiconvex and lower semicontinuous, $g(v) \leq f(v) \,\,\,\,\forall v \in \mathbb{R}^{nm}\,\}.$ Our main result is a representation theorem for $f^{({\it qc})}$ which generalizes Dacorogna's well-known theorem on the representation of the quasiconvex envelope of a finite function. The paper will be completed by the calculation of $f^{({\it qc})}$ in two examples.