The Direct Method
Early Research Directions: Calculus of Variations The Direct Method Andrejs Treibergs University of Utah Friday, March 19, 2010 2. ERD Lectures on the Calculus of Variations Notes for the first of three lectures on Calculus of Variations. 1 Andrejs Treibergs, “The Direct Method,” March 19, 2010, 2 Predrag Krtolica, “Falling Dominoes,” April 2, 2010, 3 Andrej Cherkaev, “ ‘Solving’ Problems that Have No Solutions,” April 9, 2010. The URL for these Beamer Slides: “The Direct Method” http://www.math.utah.edu/~treiberg/DirectMethodSlides.pdf 3. References Richard Courant, Dirichlet’s Principle, Conformal Mapping and Minimal Surfaces, Dover (2005); origianlly pub. in series: Pure and Applied Mathematics 3, Interscience Publishers, Inc. (1950). Lawrence C. Evans, Partial Differential Equations, Graduate Studies in Math. 19, American Mathematical Society (1998). Mario Giaquinta, Multiple Integrals in the Calculus of Variations, Annals of Math. Studies 105, Princeton University Press, 1983. Robert McOwen, Partial Differential Equations: Methods and Applications 2nd ed., Prentice Hall (2003). Richard Schoen & S. T. Yau, Lectures on Differential Geometry, Conf. Proc. & Lecture Notes in Geometry and Topology 1, International Press (1994). 4. Outline. Euler Lagrange Equations for Constrained Problems Solution of Minimization Problems Dirichlet’s principle and the Yamabe Problem. Outline of the Direct Method. Examples of failure of the Direct Method. Solve in a special case: Poisson’s Minimization Problem. Cast the minimization problem in Hilbert Space. Coercivity of the functional. Continuity of the functional. Differentiability of the functional. Convexity of the functional and uniqueness. Regularity 5. First Example of a Variational Problem: Shortest Length. To find the shortest curve γ(t) = (t, u(t)) in the Euclidean plane from (a, y1) to (b, y2) we seek the function u ∈ A, the admissible set 1 A = {w ∈ C ([a, b]) : w(a) = y1, w(b) = y2} that minimizes the length integral Z q L(u) = 1 +u ˙ 2(t) dt.
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