Relaxed area of graphs of piecewise Lipschitz maps in the strict \(BV\)-convergence (Q6185361)

The authors start from the expression of the area functional defined for \( v\in C^{1}(\Omega ;\mathbb{R}^{2})\) as: \(\mathcal{A}(v,\Omega )=\int_{\Omega }\sqrt{1+\left\vert \nabla v\right\vert ^{2}+\left\vert Jv\right\vert ^{2}} dx=\int_{\Omega }\left\vert \mathcal{M}(\nabla v)\right\vert dx\), where \( \Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^{2}\) is an open and bounded set, \(Jv\) is the Jacobian determinant of \(v\), and \(\mathcal{M}(\nabla v)=(1,\nabla v_{1},\nabla v_{2},Jv)\). Considering the case where the open and bounded set \(\Omega \) is the disjoint union \(\Omega =\cup _{k=1}^{N}\Omega _{k}\) of Lipschitz sets such that \(\Sigma =\cup _{k=1}^{N}\partial \Omega _{k}\) is the support of a finite family of \(C^{2}\)-curves \(\alpha _{\ell }:\overline{I }_{\ell }\rightarrow \overline{\Omega }\), with \(I_{\ell }=(a_{\ell },b_{\ell })\), this expression may be extended as: \(\overline{\mathcal{A}} _{BV}(v,\Omega )=inf\{\liminf_{k+\infty }\mathcal{A}(u_{k},\Omega )\), \( u_{k}\in C^{1}(\Omega ;\mathbb{R}^{2})\), \(u_{k}\rightarrow v\) strictly \( BV(\Omega ;\mathbb{R}^{2})\}\). The main result proves that if \(u:\Omega \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{2}\) is a piecewise Lipschitz map, then \(\overline{ \mathcal{A}}_{BV}(u,\Omega )=\int_{\Omega \setminus \Sigma }\left\vert \mathcal{M}(\nabla u)\right\vert dx+\sum_{\ell =1}^{n}\int_{[a_{\ell },b_{\ell }]\times I}\left\vert \partial _{t}X_{(\ell )}^{aff}\wedge \partial _{s}X_{(\ell )}^{aff}\right\vert dtds+\sum_{i=1}^{m}P(\overline{ \gamma }_{i})\), where, for any \(\ell =1,\ldots ,n\), \(X_{(\ell )}^{aff}(t,s)=(t,su_{\ell }^{+}(t)+(1-s)u_{\ell }^{-}(t))\), \(\forall (t,s)\in \lbrack a_{\ell },b_{\ell }]\times I\), and \(u_{\ell }^{\pm }\) are the traces of \(u\) on the support \(\alpha _{\ell }(I_{\ell })\) of \(\alpha _{\ell }\). The authors first define the notion of strict \(BV\) convergence and recall its properties, among which inherence properties to slices or circumferences and properties in the 1D case. They also analyze a planar Plateau problem associated to the quantity \(P(\varphi )=\inf\{\int_{B_{1}}\left\vert J(v)\right\vert dx:v\in \mathrm{Lip}(B_{1};\mathbb{R} ^{2}):v\mid _{\partial B_{1}}=\varphi \}\), where \(\varphi \) is a Lipschitz curve: \(\varphi :\mathbb{S}^{1}=\partial B_{1}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{2}\). They prove that \(P(\varphi )\) is invariant under Lipschitz reparameterizations of \(\varphi \) and continuity properties of \(P\). When \( u:R=[a,b]\times \lbrack -1,1]\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{2}\) is a piecewise Lipschitz map, they compute \(\overline{\mathcal{A}}_{BV}(u,R)=\mathcal{A} (u,R^{+})+\mathcal{A}(u,R^{-})+\int_{[a,b]\times I}\left\vert \partial _{t}X^{aff}\wedge \partial _{s}X^{aff}\right\vert dtds\), where \( R^{+}=\{(x_{1},x_{2})\in R:x_{2}>0\}\) and \(R^{-}=\{(x_{1},x_{2})\in R:x_{2}<0\}\), and they observe that this result may be extended to maps \(u\) whose jump set is a subset of \([a,b]\times \{0\}\). They then prove the preceding formula for \(\overline{\mathcal{A}}_{BV}(u,\Omega )\) in the case of a piecewise Lipschitz map \(u\) with curved jump, assuming that \(\Sigma =\alpha ([a,b])\subset \Omega \) is a simple curve, arc-length parametrized by \( \alpha :[a,b]\rightarrow \Omega \) of class \(C^{2}\) and injective in \([a,b)\), If \(\alpha (a)=\alpha (b)\), then \(\overset{.}{\alpha }(a^{+})=\overset{.}{ \alpha }(b^{-})\) and \(\overset{..}{\alpha }(a^{+})=\overset{..}{\alpha } (b^{-})\), and \(u\in W^{1,\infty }(\Omega \setminus \Sigma ;\mathbb{R}^{2})\). The authors then analyze the case of piecewise constant maps, starting with piecewise constant homogeneous maps. In the last section of their paper, they analyze the case of piecewise Lipschitz maps. Throughout the steps of the proof, the authors give examples of such maps to illustrate the results they obtain.