Free discontinuity problems and their non-local approximation (Q4499121)

The paper surveys the problems of finding a minimizing pair \((u, K)\) \((K\text{ closed }\subset \Omega\text{ open }\subset {\mathbb R}^n\) and \( u \in C^1(\Omega \setminus K)\) or other function space), to functionals of the form: volume energy \((u, K)\) + surface energy \((u, K)\) + lower terms. These are called free discontinuity problems and a typical example is provided by the Mumford-Shah functional. De Giorgi interpreted \(K\) as the set of discontinuity points of \(u\), leading to a weak formulation of the problem on the space of special functions of bounded variation, introduced by him and Ambrosio. One important property is its compactness allowing one to apply direct methods of calculus of variations. However, for numerical purposes, it is of interest to provide variational approximations of free discontinuity problems with differentiable energies defined on smooth functions. The author presents such a non-local approximation of the Mumford-Shah functional, proving the convergence result in dimension one. Other types of approximations of free discontinuity energies are listed. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0932.00045].