Calculus of Variations and Geometric Measure Theory

A. Braides

The Lavrentiev phenomenon for free-discontinuity problems

created by braidesa on 16 Jul 2025

[BibTeX]

Published Paper

Inserted: 16 jul 2025
Last Updated: 16 jul 2025

Journal: J. Functional Anal.
Volume: 127
Pages: 1-20
Year: 1995
Doi: 10.1006/jfan.1995.1001

Abstract:

We study lower-semicontinuity problems for a class of integral functionals depending on a bulk energy and a jump energy. These functionals are naturally defined on (special) functions of bounded variation, and can be extended by relaxation to a larger set of discontinuous functions. We give a representation formula for this extension showing the appearance of an additional ``Lavrentiev'' term, which values the energy necessary for the creation of a singularity with unbounded variation. In general the difference between the functional and its relaxation implies that the same minimization problem may have different solutions on BV functions and on larger spaces of discontinuous functions.

In the special case of autonomous functionals the Lavrentiev term can be expressed as an inf-convolution between the jump-part energy density and a rescaled bulk energy density.

Keywords: Free-discontinuity problems, Integral representation, Lavrentiev phenomenon, GSBV functions


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