Higher integrability for minimizers of the Mumford-Shah functional (Q741593)

The authors prove a regularity result for minimizers of a class of Mumford-Shah functionals. A typical example for such a functional is \(MS(u,K)[\Omega]:=\int_{\Omega\setminus K}|\nabla u|^2+{\mathcal {H}}^{n-1}(K\cap\Omega)\), where \(\Omega\subset {\mathbb R}^n\) is an open subset, \(K\subset\Omega\) is relatively closed and \(u\in W^{1,2}(\Omega\setminus K)\). A pair \((u,K)\) is said to be a local minimizer if for every ball \(B=B_\rho (x)\subset\subset\Omega\) the inequality \(MS(u,K)[B]\leq MS(v,H)[B]\) holds for all pairs \((v,H)\), where \(H\subset\Omega\) is relatively closed, \(v\in W^{1,2}(\Omega\setminus H)\), \(K\cap(\Omega\setminus B)=H\cap(\Omega\setminus B)\) and \(u=v\) almost everywhere in \((\Omega\setminus B)\setminus K\). It is shown that there are constants \(\gamma>1\) and \(C\) such that \(\int_{B_{1/2}\setminus K}|\nabla u|^{2\gamma}\leq C\). The proof is based on an iteration argument related to elliptic regularity theory.