Fiber bundles and regular approximation of codimension-one cycles (Q5945563)

Geometric Measure Theory has enabled the enlargement of variational problems to homology classes, via the concept of integral currents. In this paper, the authors present an approximation of codimension one integral cycles on a closed Riemannian manifold, by piece-wise smooth regular cycles for both the flat convergence and the mass convergence. This shows, in particular, that the mass functional, when restricted to a homology class, is the lower continuous envelope of the area functional on piece-wise regular cycles. This can also be seen as a supplement to previous works [``Cycles of least mass in a Riemannian manifold, described through the ``phase transition'' energy of the sections of a line bundle'', Math. Z. 225, 639-655 (1997; Zbl 0948.49024)] and [``Codimension one minimal cycles with coefficients in \(\mathbb Z\) or \(\mathbb{Z}_p\), and variational functionals on fibered spaces'', J. Geom. Anal. 9, 547-568 (1999; Zbl 0996.49024)], in which the authors established a correspondence between each homology class in \(H_{n-1}(M,\mathbb{Z}_{2})\) (or \(H_{n-1}(M,\mathbb{Z}_{p})\), \(p\) odd prime, or \(H_{n-1}(M,\mathbb{Z})\)) and a suitable characteristic class of a fibre bundle \(\xi\) over \(M\), where \(\xi\) is a real line bundle in the first case, a complex line bundle of structure group \(\mathbb{Z}_{p}\) in the second, and an affine bundle of structure group \(\mathbb{Z}\) for the third. Moreover, they showed that there is a one-one correspondence, via the jump set, between currents in a fixed homology class and the global sections of bounded variation of \(\xi\), and that the mass of cycles is proportional to the total variation of the associated sections. The approximation of total-variation minimising sections by regular sections is simplified by the present result, as is outlined in the last section of this article. The proof of the paper is, first, an approximation by sections whose jump sets are contained in a finite number of \(C^{1}\)-submanifolds with a convergence in the strong BV(\(\xi\))-norm, which, in turn, are approached by smooth submanifolds of \(M\). This allows the authors to deduce a result of \(\Gamma\)-convergence, without using minimality.