Rectifiability of the free boundary for varifolds

Abstract

We establish a partial rectifiability result for the free boundary of a $k$-varifold $V$. Namely, we first refine a theorem of Gr\"uter and Jost by showing that the first variation of a general varifold with free boundary is a Radon measure. Next we show that if the mean curvature $H$ of $V$ is in $L^p$ for some $p \in [1,k]$, then the set of points where the $k$-density of $V$ does not exist or is infinite has Hausdorff dimension at most $k-p$. We use this result to prove, under suitable assumptions, that the part of the first variation of $V$ with positive and finite $(k-1)$-density is $(k-1)$-rectifiable.