Abstract
Calibrations are a possible tool to validate the minimality of a certain candidate.
They have been introduced in the context
of minimal surfaces
and adapted to the case of the Steiner problem in several variants.
Our goal is to compare the different notions of calibrations
for the Steiner problem and for planar minimal partitions that are already present in the literature.
The paper is then complemented with remarks on the convexification of the problem, on
nonexistence of calibrations and on calibrations in families.