On the structure of divergence-free measures on $\mathbb R^2$

Abstract: We consider the structure of divergence-free vector measures on the plane. We show that such measures can be decomposed into measures induced by closed simple curves. More generally, we show that if the divergence of a planar vector-valued measure is a signed measure, then the vector-valued measure can be decomposed into measures induced by simple curves (not necessarily closed). As an application we generalize certain rigidity properties of divergence-free vector fields to vector-valued measures. Namely, we show that if a locally finite vector-valued measure has zero divergence, vanishes in the lower half-space and the normal component of the unit tangent vector of the measure is bounded from below (in the upper half-plane), then the measure is identically zero.