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1 INTRODUCTION TO THE CALCULUS OF VARIATIONS 3rd Edition

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3 INTRODUCTION TO THE CALCULUS OF VARIATIONS 3rd Edition Bernard Dacorogna Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale Lausanne, Switzerland ICP Imperial College Press

4 Published by Imperial College Press 57 Shelton Street Covent Garden London WC2H 9HE Distributed by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. 5 Toh Tuck Link, Singapore USA office: 27 Warren Street, Suite , Hackensack, NJ UK office: 57 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9HE Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dacorogna, Bernard, 1953 [Introduction au calcul des variations. English] Introduction to the calculus of variations / Bernard Dacorogna, Ecole Polytechnique Federale Lausanne, Switzerland. -- 3rd edition. pages cm Also called: Third English edition. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN (hardcover : alk. paper) -- ISBN (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Calculus of variations. 2. Mathematical analysis. I. Title. QA315.D '.64--dc British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright 2015 by Imperial College Press All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission from the Publisher. For photocopying of material in this volume, please pay a copying fee through the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. In this case permission to photocopy is not required from the publisher. Printed in Singapore

5 Contents Preface to the Third English Edition 0 Introduction Brief historical comments Model problem and some examples Presentation of the content of the monograph Preliminaries Introduction Continuous and Hölder continuous functions Space of continuous functions and notations Hölder continuous functions Exercises L p spaces Basic definitions and properties Weak convergence and Riemann-Lebesgue theorem The fundamental lemma of the calculus of variations Exercises Sobolev spaces Definitions and first properties Some further properties Imbeddings and compact imbeddings Poincaré inequality Exercises Convex analysis Exercises ix 2 Classical methods Introduction Euler-Lagrange equation v

6 vi Contents The main theorem Some important special cases Lavrentiev phenomenon Exercises Second form of the Euler-Lagrange equation Exercises Hamiltonian formulation A technical lemma The main theorem and some examples Exercises Hamilton-Jacobi equation Exercises Fields theories A simple case Exact fields and Hilbert theorem Exercises Direct methods: existence Introduction The model case: Dirichlet integral Exercises A general existence theorem The main theorem and some examples Proof of the main theorem Exercises Euler-Lagrange equation The main theorem and its proof Some examples Exercises The vectorial case The main theorem Weak continuity of determinants Proof of the main theorem Exercises Relaxation theory The relaxation theorem Some examples Exercises

7 Contents vii 4 Direct methods: regularity Introduction The one dimensional case A simple case Two general theorems Exercises The difference quotient method: interior regularity Preliminaries The Dirichlet integral A more general case Exercises The difference quotient method: boundary regularity Exercise Higher regularity for the Dirichlet integral Exercises Weyl lemma Exercise Some general results Exercises Minimal surfaces Introduction Generalities about surfaces Main definitions and some examples Minimal surfaces and surfaces of minimal area Isothermal coordinates Exercises The Douglas-Courant-Tonelli method Exercise Regularity, uniqueness and non-uniqueness Nonparametric minimal surfaces General remarks Korn-Müntz theorem Exercise Isoperimetric inequality Introduction The case of dimension Wirtinger inequality The isoperimetric inequality Exercises The case of dimension n

8 viii Contents Minkowski-Steiner formula Brunn-Minkowski theorem Proof of the isoperimetric inequality Proof of Brunn-Minkowski theorem Exercises Solutions to the exercises Chapter 1. Preliminaries Continuous and Hölder continuous functions L p spaces Sobolev spaces Convex analysis Chapter 2. Classical methods Euler-Lagrange equation Second form of the Euler-Lagrange equation Hamiltonian formulation Hamilton-Jacobi equation Fields theories Chapter 3. Direct methods: existence The model case: Dirichlet integral A general existence theorem Euler-Lagrange equation The vectorial case Relaxation theory Chapter 4. Direct methods: regularity The one dimensional case The difference quotient method: interior regularity The difference quotient method: boundary regularity Higher regularity for the Dirichlet integral Weyl lemma Some general results Chapter 5. Minimal surfaces Generalities about surfaces The Douglas-Courant-Tonelli method Nonparametric minimal surfaces Chapter 6. Isoperimetric inequality The case of dimension The case of dimension n Bibliography 301 Index 309

9 Preface to the Third English Edition The present book by now has a long history. It appeared first in French under the title Introduction au calcul des variations in 1992 with the Presses Polytechniques et Universitaires Romandes (PPUR). It was then translated into English and published by Imperial College Press (ICP) in A second edition was completed in Throughout the different editions, the size of the book has doubled, keeping the same structure but with more developments and exercises. After several years of experience, I think that the present book can adequately serve as a concise and broad introduction to the calculus of variations. It can be used at undergraduate as well as at graduate level. Of course at a more advanced level it has to be complemented by more specialized materials and I have indicated, in every chapter, appropriate books for further reading. The numerous exercises (now 119), integrally solved in Chapter 7, will also be important to help understanding the subject better. The calculus of variations is one of the classical subjects in mathematics. Several outstanding mathematicians have contributed, over centuries, to its development. It is still a very alive and evolving subject. Besides its mathematical importance and its links with other branches of mathematics, such as geometry or differential equations, it is widely used in physics, engineering, economics and biology. I have decided, in order to remain as unified and concise as possible, not to speak of any applications other than mathematical ones. Every interested reader, whether physicist, engineer or biologist, will easily see where, in their own subject, the results of the present monograph are used. This fact is clearly asserted by the numerous engineers and physicists that followed the course that resulted in the present book. Let us now examine the content of the monograph. It should first be emphasized that it is not a reference book. Each individual chapter could, on its own, be the subject of a book. For example, I have written one that, essentially, ix

10 x Preface to the Third English Edition covers the subject of Chapter 3. Furthermore, several aspects of the calculus of variations are not discussed here. One of the aims is to serve as a guide to the extensive existing literature. However, the main purpose is to help the nonspecialist, whether mathematician, physicist, engineer, student or researcher, to discover the most important problems, results and techniques of the subject. Despite the aim of addressing the non-specialists, I have tried not to sacrifice the mathematical rigor. Most of the theorems are either fully proved or proved under stronger, but significant, assumptions than stated. The different chapters may be read more or less independently. In Chapter 1, I have recalled some standard results on spaces of functions (Hölder, L p or Sobolev spaces) and on convex analysis. The reader, familiar or not with these subjects, can, at first reading, omit this chapter and refer to it when needed in the next ones. They are much used in Chapters 3 and 4 but less in the others. All the chapters, besides numerous examples, contain exercises that are fully solved in Chapter 7. In all the different editions, I benefited from many discussions with students and colleagues. I would like to thank particularly S. Bandyopadhyay, S. Basterrechea, O. Besson, S.D. Chatterji, G. Csato, G. Cupini, C. Hebeisen, O. Kneuss, M. M. Marques, F. Meylan, K.D. Semmler, J. Sesiano, S. Sil and F. Weissbaum. I also want to thank the staff of Imperial College Press and World Scientific for their very nice job.