Polar factorization and monotone rearrangement of vector-valued functions

Given a probability space (X, μ) and a bounded domain Ω in ?^d equipped with the Lebesgue measure |·| (normalized so that |Ω| = 1), it is shown (under additional technical assumptions on X and Ω) that for every vector-valued function u ∈ L^p (X, μ; ?^d) there is a unique “polar factorization” u = ?Ψs, where Ψ is a convex function defined on Ω and s is a measure-preserving mapping from (X, μ) into (Ω, |·|), provided that u is nondegenerate, in the sense that μ(u^?1(E)) = 0 for each Lebesgue negligible subset E of ?^d. Through this result, the concepts of polar factorization of real matrices, Helmholtz decomposition of vector fields, and nondecreasing rearrangements of real-valued functions are unified. The Monge-Ampère equation is involved in the polar factorization and the proof relies on the study of an appropriate “Monge-Kantorovich” problem.