Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2018/iii/paper-107/5/d/solution

Let , so has zero Dirichlet boundary condition. Using the supplied form of the minimal surface equation for a graph, set
For and , the difference bound implies
and
The shifted arguments stay in the permitted radius-two ball, and . The Laplacian with zero Dirichlet boundary condition has trivial null space by the maximum principle for harmonic functions. Choose small enough that and , for the constants in part (c) with . Its small-data existence for a nonlinear elliptic Dirichlet problem supplies , and solves the minimal surface equation for a graph with the required boundary values.

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