Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-functional-analytic-methods-for-partial-differential-equations-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2023/2/a/ii/solution

For , the functions and are bounded. Hence and belong to . For a test function , the classical product rule and the weak derivative identity for , tested with , give
Therefore
In fact has compact support in and belongs to the corresponding zero-boundary Sobolev space, by mollification within that support.
For arbitrary , the same identity still proves the local product rule for weak derivatives, but membership in the global Sobolev space can fail. To give a counterexample for every dimension and every in the question, take
Here and is a smooth function on the open ball, while polar coordinates show
Thus , and the global assertion is false. Boundedness of and its first derivatives would suffice without compact support.

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