Special functions with bounded variation and with weakly differentiable traces on the jump set (Q1386400)

The variational problem with volume and surface energy: \[ {\mathcal E}(u) = \int_{\Omega} f(x,u,{\nabla u})\;dx + \int_{S(u)} g(x,u^+,u^-,{\nu}_u)\;dH^{n-1} \] is considered on \(\text{SBV}(\Omega,\mathbb R^m)\) spaces. Such a class of spaces was introduced by E. De Giorgi and L. Ambrosio and it permits to solve many problems from fracture mechanics, computer vision, theory of liquid cristals and so on. Above, the jump set \(S(u)\) denotes the complement of the set of Lebesgue points of \(u\), \({\nu}_u\) is the unit normal to \(S(u)\) and \(u^{\pm}\) are approximate trace values of \(u\) on both sides of \(S(u)\). The authors look for subclasses of SBV functions for which it is possible to define ``weak tangential derivatives'' of \(u^{\pm}\) on \(S(u)\) and characterize them by a suitable integration by parts formula. The two subclasses are described. The class \(\text{SBV}_0({\Omega},\mathbb R)\), with compactness property, consists of SBV functions which possess BV traces on \(S(u)\), while the class \(\text{SBV}_0^p({\Omega},\mathbb R)\) consisting of SBV functions with Sobolev traces on \(S(u)\) is not compact. This is due to the fact that the jump sets may loose area in the limit which cannot happen if we have convergence of \(n-1\) dimensional Hausdorff measures: \(H^{n-1}(S(u_h)) \to H^{n-1}(S(u))\).