A finite right derivative at zero would make the difference quotients eventually bounded. Therefore that event is contained in
For fixed , its probability is at most for each . By the normal distribution of the Brownian increment,
Thus every event in this countable union has probability zero. With probability one, Brownian motion has no finite right derivative at zero, which is the appropriate derivative for its time domain. No independence of the quotients is assumed or needed. This proves the required endpoint case of nowhere differentiability of Brownian motion.
Consider the flat function
Away from zero every derivative has the form for a polynomial : differentiating preserves this form. For every ,
because an exponential function decays faster than any power. Inductively, extend each displayed derivative by zero at zero. It is continuous there, and its difference quotient at zero also tends to zero by the same estimate with one extra power of . Thus each extension is the derivative of the preceding extension. This proves and for all .
Its Taylor series at zero is identically zero, whereas for every . It is smooth everywhere but not real analytic at zero.
The interior elliptic regularity assertion for the Laplace equation is that a harmonic function is smooth, in fact real analytic, throughout . No boundary regularity of its unspecified boundary values is implied.
First let and . On a ball compactly contained in , differentiating its spherical average and applying the divergence theorem expresses that derivative as a constant factor times , which is zero. The spherical average tends to at the center as . This proves the mean value property for harmonic functions.
Choose a radially symmetric smooth mollifier , supported in , with integral one. By integrating the spherical mean value property,
whenever . For fixed the right side is a smooth convolution, since all derivatives can be placed on . Thus is smooth. The same argument proves the Weyl lemma for a distributionally harmonic : first mollify , apply the fixed-radius identity, and let the mollification radius tend to zero in distributions to obtain the same smooth representative.
To prove real analytic regularity, differentiating the fixed-radius convolution gives the interior derivative estimate for a harmonic function
for any harmonic . All derivatives of are harmonic. On nested balls between and , apply this estimate times, decreasing the radius by each time. For ,
The inequality follows by integrating below the sum defining . Apply the one-dimensional Taylor theorem along each segment, expanding directional derivatives by the multinomial formula. The remainder is bounded by , so it tends to zero for sufficiently small . This gives a locally convergent multivariate Taylor series. A harmonic function is real analytic in the interior.
The usual inhomogeneous elliptic regularity statement also follows: if and is smooth, take a cutoff equal to one near a given point and set , where is a fundamental solution of the Laplace equation with . Moving every derivative to the compactly supported smooth function shows is smooth. Locally is harmonic, so is smooth there too.
Use a bounded BV extension operator for the bounded Lipschitz domain. Extend to , supported in one fixed compact set, with . Such an extension is obtained by reflection in Lipschitz boundary charts, a partition of unity and a fixed cutoff function. A naive zero extension must also charge its boundary-trace jump; it cannot discard that contribution.
Let bound these norms and let be their mollifications. The BV mollification error estimate gives
The variation measure here is on . The printed lemma's needs this correction unless it also assumes all the derivative mass lies in : a nonconstant bump supported outside disproves its literal wording. The correct estimate follows by averaging the BV translation estimate over a mollifier supported in .
For each fixed , convolution gives uniform bounds
The mollifications have common compact support and are uniformly equicontinuous. The Arzelà-Ascoli theorem supplies a uniformly convergent subsequence at each scale . A diagonal subsequence converges at every one of those scales. For two late members of that subsequence,
First choose large , then late ; the sequence is a Cauchy sequence in . Its limit belongs to the BV space because the total variation seminorm on a domain is sequentially lower semicontinuous. Uniform derivative bounds and integration by parts give . Restriction to proves the required weak-star convergence in BV.
Put , a finite signed Radon measure, and define
For , Fubini's theorem for the signed measure gives
Thus . A distribution on a connected interval with zero derivative is constant: any compactly supported test of integral zero is the derivative of a compactly supported test, so it pairs to zero with . Choose the resulting constant . Then
are one-sided representatives of a one-dimensional BV function. The first equals almost everywhere. Their difference is , nonzero at at most countably many points, so the second also equals almost everywhere.
Finite-measure continuity applied to proves as , and as . Moreover the opposite one-sided limits are and . Consequently both representatives are continuous exactly where . For each positive integer , there are only finitely many measure atoms of magnitude at least , since their total magnitudes are bounded by . Their union is countable, proving the requested discontinuity bound. This does not require the jump points to be isolated; they can be dense.
The hint's one-dimensional statement is consistent with this construction: zero measure means an empty set, so . This concerns approximate discontinuities of the BV space class; arbitrary changes of representative at points could create artificial pointwise discontinuities. The interval-mass representatives above remove that ambiguity and give the required one-sided continuity directly.
First apply Lebesgue decomposition to the derivative measure relative to :
Here is the almost-everywhere approximate gradient, rather than an assertion that belongs to . Split the singular part into its jump part of a BV derivative and Cantor part of a BV derivative:
An approximate jump point has a unit normal and distinct finite BV traces on a hypersurface , obtained as mean limits on the corresponding two half-balls. Their set is the jump set of a BV function, countably -rectifiable. Reversing the normal swaps the BV traces on a hypersurface and leaves the displayed measure unchanged. The approximate discontinuity set differs from only by an -null set.
The remaining is singular to Lebesgue measure and gives zero mass to every set with sigma-finite measure. It is diffuse rather than a second jump contribution. In one dimension the three parts are illustrated by an affine function, a step function and the Cantor function, respectively. Countably many jumps therefore do not imply that the singular derivative has no Cantor part of a BV derivative.
A one-dimensional Sobolev representative is absolutely continuous. For , the fundamental theorem of calculus and Holder inequality give
Thus has a representative in . The qualification about representatives matters because a Sobolev space element is an almost-everywhere equivalence class.
In two dimensions, the Sobolev fundamental theorem of calculus on lines and Fubini's theorem imply that almost every horizontal and vertical slice belongs to and has this one-dimensional Hölder continuity. The slice seminorm depends on the slice; this does not give one uniform pointwise estimate on the square. For , Morrey's inequality additionally gives a globally Hölder continuous representative of exponent . For , global continuity need not hold. For example, with a smooth cutoff around an interior point, lies in when , but is unbounded. At , the cutoff version of is unbounded while its gradient has finite squared integral, since
These examples distinguish Sobolev slicing and planar continuity from a false two-dimensional application of the interval exponent.
Put . A BV space is a function whose distributional derivative is a finite vector-valued Radon measure. Equivalently its total variation seminorm is finite:
The BV space has norm . For , integration by parts against the compactly supported field gives . Conversely the measurable choice on nonzero gradients attains the pointwise bound. Approximating this bounded field by smooth fields, using interior cutoffs and the finite measure , justifies the supremum and gives
It is a norm of the derivative measure, rather than a pointwise derivative at jump discontinuities.
There is a genuine mismatch in the printed definition of the next functional. Its constraints on and are independent. Hence its stated supremum, denoted , separates as
The scalar supremum is , by cutoffs approaching one, and the vector supremum is the variation. For an affine image signal with , this gives , whereas the displayed square-root area would give . The intended relaxed graph-area functional instead uses the coupled pointwise constraint , giving
where is the singular part of . Both readings have a minimizer, but their equations are different.
Here is the direct method in the calculus of variations for either reading. Let be the literal or the corrected , and define the energy on , assigning infinity elsewhere. A minimizing sequence has bounded energy by comparison with . Both , so its variation is bounded, and the fidelity bounds , hence also and . By bounded-variation compactness, a subsequence converges strongly in to , and after another subsequence almost everywhere. Fatou's lemma proves
The regularizer is a supremum of affine functionals continuous in , since the test-field divergence is bounded. It is therefore lower semicontinuous. Combining the two lower bounds proves existence of a minimizer. In fact the convex regularizer and the strictly convex squared fidelity make the minimizer unique up to null sets. This does not assert that the minimizer must belong to .
For the intended graph area, conditionally assume that the minimizer is in . For , differentiate at . The derivative of the integrand is bounded by , so dominated convergence applies. The weak equation is
that is,
This is the graph-area Euler-Lagrange equation. Compactly supported variations impose no boundary condition in this statement.
For the literal printed supremum, the constant drops out and one obtains total variation denoising. Its total variation calibration form is
The distributional equation means . In particular wherever the gradient is nonzero; writing this quotient without handling zero gradients would be incomplete. Formally the one-sided derivative of is
Minimality in the directions and bounds the remaining linear functional by the second integral. The Hahn-Banach theorem extends it on that zero-gradient set to a bounded vector field of magnitude at most one, furnishing and the displayed weak equation. Thus the literal definition has a nonsmooth subgradient equation, not the square-root equation above.
Interpret the printed Euclidean norm literally on the full vector array . It is a single global norm, not the sum of pixelwise gradient lengths in discrete isotropic total variation. Set and let be its exact adjoint operator for the chosen difference and boundary conventions. The closed dual ball and its image signal are
The set is nonempty, convex and compact, hence closed, because it is a linear image signal of a compact ball in finite dimensions. Euclidean norm duality gives
the support function of .
The metric projection onto a closed convex set uniquely minimizes over . Its variational characterization of convex projection says
Put . This inequality says precisely that . For any , the primal energy satisfies
Completing the square shows that the right side is uniquely minimized by . At that point the inequality is equality, so
This also follows from the proximal operator of a support function and Moreau decomposition: the convex conjugate of is the indicator functional of a constraint set for . The squared fidelity is strictly convex and coercive, so the primal minimizer exists and is unique.
The convex projection in this formula is the removed component , not generally itself. A metric convex projection onto one fixed closed convex set is idempotent. On a right singular vector direction with positive singular value of any nonzero , this denoising map reduces to soft thresholding with a positive threshold, and applying it twice shrinks again. It therefore cannot be such a convex projection for all data. This qualifies the printed convex projection wording while giving the required global gradient-norm projection residual.
Compute by solving the convex dual least-squares problem
Its gradient is and has Lipschitz constant . Projected gradient descent gives
For fixed , the finite-dimensional projected-gradient convergence theorem ensures that converges to a dual minimizer. Reconstruct ; its limit is the unique primal solution even if dual minimizers are nonunique. If , the primal solution is simply and no iteration is needed. For unit-grid forward differences with periodic or zero-difference boundaries, , so is sufficient. Grid-spacing factors or other boundary stencils change this bound.
The normalization here is global. If a pixelwise sum of gradient lengths had instead been intended, the dual feasible set would be a product of pixelwise balls and convex projection would normalize each block separately; it is a different regularizer and should not be silently substituted.
For the discrete Hessian-norm denoising variant, write and use
This is again a compact convex image signal of a Euclidean ball, now under the second-difference adjoint. In suitable conventions is a discrete double divergence, but its exact boundary adjoint is what defines the set. It lies in , so components in are preserved by denoising. Interior second derivatives annihilate affine image signals; whether all such image signals remain in the kernel depends on the boundary convention. With a pixelwise Hessian norm, the corresponding balls would instead be four-component blocks.
A rigorous Mumford–Shah functional permits nonsmooth image signals and free discontinuities. One classical admissible class consists of relatively closed countably rectifiable sets with finite Hausdorff measure , and with finite energy. No exterior boundary values are prescribed. For an existence argument, use the equivalent relaxed class
A special bounded-variation space excludes the Cantor part of a bounded-variation derivative of the derivative: . The jump set of a bounded-variation function is the relaxed image edge set. Clipping to decreases squared fidelity, does not increase the gradient term, and does not create jumps, so this bound loses no minimizers.
Take a minimizing sequence and compare with a constant image signal. Its gradient norms and jump lengths are bounded. Also
so the sequence is bounded in . The SBV compactness theorem for bounded values, superlinear gradient growth and bounded jump measure yields an limit in , weak convergence of gradients in , and lower semicontinuity of both the Dirichlet term and the jump measure. The uniform value bound upgrades convergence to , so fidelity converges. This proves existence of a relaxed minimizer. Essential closedness of Mumford–Shah jump sets then supplies a relatively closed representative , without added length, and . This completes the outline for the classical pair problem. Arbitrary Hausdorff convergence of image edge sets alone is not an adequate substitute for these compactness and regularity results. No uniqueness is claimed for segmentation.
As with fixed, bounded energy forces in . The reduced piecewise-constant Mumford–Shah problem is
Equivalently, use a Caccioppoli partition of the image signal domain and constants :
The relative perimeter counts only interior boundaries, and the factor one half counts each interface once. Adjacent equal-valued regions can be merged, removing unnecessary boundaries.
For fixed , let be its positive-area regions. Minimization over reduces to independent scalar least-squares fits:
The minimized fidelity is . Thus region means in piecewise-constant segmentation give the optimal grey values for a fixed segmentation.
For a fixed full spatial function , the image edge set must contain its jumps; any extra curve only adds length. The optimal choice is its essential jump set, with a relatively closed representative when appropriate. There is no independent relocation of boundaries while that full function is held fixed. A different common alternating step fixes the values but allows the labels to move. It minimizes the fidelity-plus-perimeter partition functional above. Without the perimeter term each point takes its nearest grey value; with it, interface length is penalized. At a smooth interface between two labels, outward normal displacement of has first variation
where is positive for an outward normal to a circle. The stationary segmentation interface curvature balance is
This is the geometric interpretation of optimizing boundaries with fixed grey levels, and distinguishes it from fixing the whole spatial image signal.
As with fixed, a constant competitor bounds the minimum independently of , forcing . compactness in the relaxed formulation leaves no jump or Cantor part of a bounded-variation derivative, so the limit is in on the connected rectangle. The reduced edge-free Mumford–Shah limit is
A set of zero length can be omitted; this does not impose a zero image signal or a Dirichlet boundary value. Comparison with any fixed competitor and lower semicontinuity justify the limit minimization.
For completeness, the bilinear form on is continuous and coercive, with . The right-hand side is bounded because on the bounded rectangle. The Lax-Milgram theorem gives a unique satisfying
It is the unique minimizer by strict convexity. Formally,
with the Neumann condition understood through this weak formulation. Equivalently, subtracting the weak equation shows that the energy increase at is for nonzero .