We assign a measure to an upper semicontinuous function which is subharmonic with respect to the mean curvature operator, so that it agrees with the mean curvature of its graph when the function is smooth. We prove that the measure is weakly continuous with respect to almost everywhere convergence. We also establish a sharp Harnack inequality for the minimal surface equation, which is crucial for our proof of the weak continuity. As an application we prove the existence of weak solutions to the...

For two-dimensional, immersed closed surfaces $f:\Sigma \to {ℝ}^n$, we study the curvature functionals ${ℰ}^p\left(f\right)$ and ${𝒲}^p\left(f\right)$ with integrands ${(1+|A|}^2{)}^{p/2}$ and ${(1+|H|}^2{)}^{p/2}$, respectively. Here $A$ is the second fundamental form, $H$ is the mean curvature and we assume $p>2$. Our main result asserts that $W^{2,p}$ critical points are smooth in both cases. We also prove a compactness theorem for ${𝒲}^p$-bounded sequences. In the case of ${ℰ}^p$ this is just Langer’s theorem [16], while for ${𝒲}^p$ we have to impose a bound for the Willmore energy strictly below $8\pi$ as an additional condition....