Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2022/iii/paper-105/3/a/solution

Let and satisfy the hypotheses of the Lax-Milgram theorem. By the Riesz representation theorem, there are a bounded linear operator and such that
Coercivity and the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality imply
so . Thus is injective and its range is closed. If is orthogonal to its range, then for every ; taking and using coercivity gives . The range is therefore dense as well as closed, hence all of . There is a unique , and it satisfies for all . The lower bound also gives .

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