Linear inverse problems with Hessian-Schatten total variation (Q6140828)

Let~\(\Omega\) be an open set of \(\mathbb{R}^{n}\) and \(p\in\lbrack1,\infty].\) The \(p\)-Hessian-Schatten total variation (HTV) of a function \(f\in L_{loc} ^{1}(\Omega)\) is the restriction to open sets of a finite Borel measure defined as \(\left\vert \mathrm{D}_{p}^{2}f\right\vert (A)=\sup_{F}\int_{A} \sum_{i,j\in\{1,\dots,n\}}f\partial_{i}\partial_{j}F_{i,j}\mathrm{d} \mathcal{L}^{n},\) where the supremum runs among all \(F\in\left( C_{c} ^{\infty}(A)\right) ^{n\times n}\) with \(\left\Vert F\right\Vert _{p^{\ast },\infty}\leq1.\) Here \(\mathcal{L}^{n}\) denotes the Lebesgue measure on \(\mathbb{R}^{n}.\) The function \(f\) has bounded total variation if \(\left\vert \mathrm{D}_{p}^{2}f\right\vert (\Omega)<\infty\). For any couple \(p,q\) \(\in\lbrack1,+\infty]\), \(f\) has bounded \(p\)-Hessian-Schatten total variation if and only if \(f\) has bounded \(q\)-Hessian-Schatten variation and moreover \(C^{-1}\) \(\left\vert \mathrm{D}_{p}^{2}f\right\vert \leq\left\vert \mathrm{D}_{q}^{2}f\right\vert \leq C\) \(\left\vert \mathrm{D}_{p} ^{2}f\right\vert \) for some constant \(C=C(p,q)>0\) depending only on \(p\) and \(q\). According to Proposition 9, a function \(f\in L_{loc}^{1}(\Omega\) has bounded \(1\)-Hessian-Schatten variation if and only if \(f\in W_{loc} ^{1,1}(\Omega)\), \(\nabla f\in\mathrm{BV}_{loc}(\Omega)\) and \(\left\vert \mathrm{D}\nabla f\right\vert (\Omega)<\infty\). The class of continuous and piecewise linear (CPWL) functions is introduced as follows: a function \(f\in C(\Omega)\) belongs to CPWL\((\Omega)\) if there exists a decomposition \(\{P_{k}\}_{k}\) of \(\mathbb{R}^{n}\) in \(n\)-dimensional convex polytopes intersecting only at their boundaries (their intersection being either empty or a common face) such that for every \(k\), \(f|_{P_{k}\cap\Omega}\) is affine and such that for every ball \(B\), only finitely many \(P_{k}\) intersect \(B\). In this paper, the class of extremal points of the unit ball \(\{f\in L_{loc}^{1}((0,1)^{n}):\) \(\left\vert \mathrm{D}_{1}^{2}f\right\vert ((0,1)^{n})\leq1\}\) of the \(1\)-Hessian-Schatten total variation functional is studied. An important result is Theorem 21, which asserts that for every \(f\in L_{loc}^{1}((0,1)^{2})\) with bounded Hessian-Schatten variation in \((0,1)^{2}\) there exists a sequence \((f_{k})_{k}\) of functions in CPWL\(((0,1)^{2}),\) convergent in \(L^{\infty}((0,1)^{2})\) to \(f\) and such that \(\left\vert \mathrm{D}_{1}^{2}f_{k}\right\vert ((0,1)^{2})\) is convergent to \(\left\vert \mathrm{D}_{1}^{2}f\right\vert ((0,1)^{2})\). Remarkably, the proof of this theorem is constructive and provides an effective algorithm to build such approximating sequence.