On the Morse-Sard property and level sets of Sobolev and BV functions (Q1941165)

Let \(\Omega\) be an open subset of \(\mathbb{R}^2\). The main theorem of the paper asserts that functions from the space \(\mathrm{BV}_{2}(\Omega)\) possess Luzin \(N\) property with respect to 1-dimensional Hausdorff measure. From this result a Morse-Sard type theorem on critical values for \(\mathrm{BV}_{2}\) functions is obtained. Using these results it is proved that for \(\mathrm{BV}_{2}\) functions almost all level sets are finite disjoint unions of Lipschitz arcs whose tangent vectors are of bounded variation. In the case of \(\mathrm{W}^{2,1}\) functions a stronger property is established: almost all level sets are finite disjoint unions of \(\mathrm{C}^1\) arcs whose tangent vectors are absolutely continuous along these arcs.