Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-partial-differential-equations-for-pure-and-applied-mathematicians-and-calculus-of-variations-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2007/a/3/solution

Bounded coefficients and Cauchy-Schwarz give . Uniform ellipticity gives because . Poincaré inequality holds on of a bounded domain, so
A weak solution is satisfying for every . The energy is finite by boundedness of and the forcing functional, and
It is bounded below and a minimizing sequence is bounded in the Hilbert space . Its closed linear span is separable, so part 1 supplies a weakly convergent subsequence with limit . Symmetry and nonnegativity of show
The forcing term converges by weak convergence. Thus , proving attainment. First variation in every zero-trace direction gives the weak equation. If are two solutions, test their difference equation with and use coercivity to get . Hence there is exactly one weak solution, and it is the unique energy minimizer. Indeed directly verifies the minimizing property.

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