Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-calculus-of-variations-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2009/1/b/iii/solution

If an admissible attained the infimum, nonnegativity and would force almost everywhere, so its continuous Sobolev representative would be identically zero. Its derivative would then vanish almost everywhere, but the other integrand term would equal . This is impossible. Equivalently, zero energy would simultaneously require and almost everywhere. Thus

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