Higher integrability of the gradient for minimizers of the \(2d\) Mumford-Shah energy (Q391380)

Based on quotes from the authors' introduction: The aim of this paper is to prove a higher integrability result that was conjectured by \textit{E. De Giorgi} [Free discontinuity problems in calculus of variations. Frontiers in pure and applied mathematics, Coll. Pap. Ded. J.-L. Lions Occas. 60th Birthday, 55--62 (1991; Zbl 0758.49002), Conjecture 1] in all space dimensions. The interest is motivated by a paper of \textit{L. Ambrosio} et al. [Calc. Var. Partial Differ. Equ. 16, No. 2, 187--215 (2003; Zbl 1047.49015)], where the authors investogared the connection between the higher integrability of \(\nabla{u}\) and the Mumford-Shah conjecture. The authors remark that a weaker form of the Mumford-Shah conjecture in \(2d\) is equivalent to a sharp \(L^p\) estimate of the gradient of the minimizers. Section 3 of the paper relates minimal 2-dimensional partitions to minimal networks: the main proposition is well-known but, since the authors have not been able to find a reference, they provide a proof. Section 4 contains the first key ingredient: the argument which gives an alternatives list. The next section contains a proof of the compactness properties and Section 6 collects all the technical statements of the previous sections.