Local calibrations for minimizers of the Mumford-Shah functional with rectilinear discontinuity sets (Q1569016)

The aim of the paper is to provide sufficient conditions for the local minimality of the two-dimensional Mumford-Shah functional: \[ {\mathcal F}(u,A):=\int_A|\nabla u|^2 dx+{\mathcal H}^{1}(S_u). \] Specifically, one looks for conditions on \(u:\Omega\subset{\mathbb R}^2\to{\mathbb R}\) ensuring that \(u\) minimizes the functional with respect to its own boundary values, i.e., \[ {\mathcal F}(u,A)\leq {\mathcal F}(v,A)\quad \text{whenever \(\{u\neq v\}\subset\subset A\subset\subset\Omega\).} \] This problem is non-trivial because of the lack of convexity of the functional. Assume that \(u\) is a stationary point, i.e., \(u\) is harmonic on the complement of the jump set, has 0 normal derivative on both sides of the jump set and the curvature of the jump set equals the jump of \(|\nabla u|^2\). Adapting the calibration method introduced in a previous work by Alberti, Bouchitté and Dal Maso, the authors show that \(u\) minimizes the Mumford--Shah functional with respect to compactly supported perturbations, provided the support \(\{u\neq v\}\) of the perturbation is sufficiently small. The proof is achieved under some extra technical assumptions on \(u\), namely that the jump set is a segment and the tangential first and second order derivatives of \(u\) on both sides of the jump set are nowhere equal to 0.