Mumford-Shah minimizers on thin plates (Q2501174)

The paper is concerned with the study of the limit, as \(t\to 0^+\), of minimizers of the Mumford-Shah functional on an open set \(\Omega=\Omega'\times]0,t[\). The main result states that such limits are again minimizers of the same functional, but on \(\Omega'\). For example, if \(\Omega'\subseteq{\mathbb R}^{n-1}\), \(\{t_k\}\) is a sequence of positive numbers converging to 0, and \(\{g_k\}\) is a sequence in \(L^\infty(\Omega'\times]0,t_k[)\) weakly converging to \(g\in L^\infty(\Omega')\), then the minimizers of the functional \[ J_k(u,K)=H^{n-1}(K)+\int_{\Omega\backslash K}| \nabla u| ^2+\int_{\Omega\backslash K}| u-g_k| ^2 \] converge to a minimizer of \[ J(u,K)=H^{n-2}(K)+\int_{\Omega'\backslash K}| \nabla u| ^2+\int_{\Omega'\backslash K}| u-g| ^2. \] More general situations are analyzed as well, for example the one with slowly varying widths. The case with \(n=2\) is treated in details, and sharper results are obtained.