Strict BV relaxed area of Sobolev maps into the circle: the high dimension case

We deal with the relaxed area functional in the strict BV-convergence of non-smooth maps defined in domains of generic dimension and taking values into the unit circle. In case of Sobolev maps, a complete explicit formula is obtained. Our proof is based on tools from Geometric Measure Theory and Cartesian currents. We then discuss the possible extension to the wider class of maps with bounded variation. Finally, we show a counterexample to the locality property in case of both dimension and codimension larger than two.