Lower semicontinuity

A function is lower semicontinuous when its strict superlevel sets are open, equivalently when its sublevel sets are closed. In Euclidean spaces this is the sequential lower semicontinuity condition $f(x)\le {\mathrm{liminf}}_{k}f(x_k)$ whenever $x_k\to x$. This closedness property is essential to existence of proximal minimizers.