Regular Curves, Singular Graphs: Cantor Parts and the Relaxed Willmore Energy

Abstract

One might expect that finite relaxed elastic energy rules out diffuse singularities in the derivative, leaving only absolutely continuous and jump parts. This is suggested by the role of $SBV$ in free-discontinuity problems and by interpreting jumps as vertical segments of limiting graphs. We show that it fails for the relaxed one-dimensional Willmore energy. We construct a continuous function $u\in BV((0,1))$ with $D^c u\neq0$ and $\overline{\mathcal{W}}(u)<\infty $, so finite relaxed Willmore energy does not imply $u\in SBV((0,1))$. The idea is to concentrate the Cantor part exactly where the absolutely continuous slope blows up. There the singular diffuse measure meets the blow-up condition of the relaxation theorem, while the weighted curvature term stays integrable. Geometrically, the example shows that Cantor parts of $BV$-graph derivatives need not be intrinsic singularities of the underlying curve. The graph has an arc-length parametrization of class $C^1\cap W^{2,2}$, and a suitable rotation turns it into a Lipschitz graph whose derivative has no singular part. The construction also rescales to make the relaxed Willmore energy arbitrarily small, and it extends to relaxed $L^p$-curvature energies for all $p>1$.