Boundary effects and weak$^*$ lower semicontinuity for signed integral functionals on $\mathrm{BV}$

Abstract

We characterize lower semicontinuity of integral functionals with respect to weak * convergence in BV, including integrands whose negative part has linear growth. In addition, we allow for sequences without a fixed trace at the boundary. In this case, both the integrand and the shape of the boundary play a key role. This is made precise in our newly found condition -quasi-sublinear growth from below at points of the boundary -which compensates for possible concentration effects generated by the sequence. Our work extends some recent results by J.