The 1-Harmonic Flow with Values into $\mathbb S^{1}$

Abstract

We introduce a notion of solution for the $1$-harmonic flow, i.e., the formal gradient flow of the total variation functional with respect to the $L^2$-distance, from a domain of $\mathbb R^m$ into a geodesically convex subset of an $N$-sphere. For such a notion, under homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions, we prove both existence and uniqueness of solutions when the target space is a semicircle and the existence of solutions when the target space is a circle and the initial datum has no jumps of an “angle” larger than $\pi$. Earlier results in [J. W. Barrett, X. Feng, and A. Prohl, SIAM J. Math. Anal., 40 (2008), pp. 1471--1498] and [X. Feng, Calc. Var. Partial Differential Equations, 37 (2011), pp. 111--139] are also discussed.