A class of one-dimensional geometric variational problem with energy involving the curvature and its derivatives: a geometric measure-theoretic approach (Q931365)

The aim of this paper is to investigate one-dimensional geometric variational problems with energy involving curvature and its derivatives; the main result for these type of problems in the planar case is given by Theorem 6.1 where a lower semicontinuity result of such energy is proved. In order to obtain these results, the author introduces and investigates the notion of Legendrian and Gaussian towers, special types of one--dimensional integral currents carrying informations of its curvature and further derivatives; in particular, compactness and lower semicontinuity results are given for the class of towers with equibounded mass and for certain functionals defined on them.