Seminar on BV Functions and the Calculus of Variations (in Summer Term 2020)

Instructors: Giovanni E. Comi, Thomas Schmidt

Time slot: Thu, 10-12, room 415

Postponement of the seminar: Due to the current situation the start of the seminar is postponed for an undetermined period of time. Further information will follow as soon as possible.

ECTS points: 6 ECTS (on presentation and written elaboration)

Participant group: The seminar is part of the Master Program in Mathematics, Industrial Mathematics, Business Mathematics, or Mathematical Physics.

Prerequisites: We expect a solid a-priori knowledge in Analysis (which includes experience with general measure theory, functional analysis, and Sobolev spaces, for instance).

Contents: The selection of topics will also depend on the field of participants. A non-exhaustive list of ideas for possible directions is:

• fine properties of BV functions, Gauss-Green formulas for BV functions,
• sharp isoperimetric inequalities,
• the first variation of area and minimal surfaces,
• (mean) curvature problems for hypersurfaces,
• relaxation of non-(quasi)convex variational problems,
• weak convergence methods in the calculus of variations.

Literature: Will be announced later.