$Γ$-convergence of Nonlocal Dirichlet Energies With Penalty Formulations of Dirichlet Boundary Data

We study nonlocal Dirichlet energies associated with a class of nonlocal diffusion models on a bounded domain subject to the conventional local Dirichlet boundary condition. The Dirichlet boundary condition is imposed through a specifically designed penalty formulation. We prove that the nonlocal Dirichlet energies with the penalty terms converge to local Dirichlet energies with Dirichlet boundary conditions in the sense of $\varGamma$-convergence.