Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2017 / iii / Paper 340 / 4 / a / Solution

For real $u\in L^1(\Omega )$, its total variation seminorm on a domain isThe vector fields have compact support inside $\Omega$, so no boundary term is charged. Taking both $\xi$ and $-\xi$ makes this equivalent to a supremum of absolute pairings. When finite, the distributional derivative $Du$ is a finite vector-valued Radon measure, and the displayed supremum is its total variation norm of a measure. For a smooth function it equals ${\int }_{\Omega }|\nabla u{|}_{2}dx$.

The function of bounded variation on a domain belongs to the Banach spaceThe L1 norm is needed because variation alone vanishes on constant functions and is only a seminorm. No smoothness of $u$ is part of this definition.