Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2010 iii Paper 5 5 d Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Fix a compact and choose such that a closed -neighbourhood of is compactly contained in . The hypothesis gives a common bound on that neighbourhood. Choose a smooth radial mollifier supported in with integral one. The mean value property for harmonic functions, integrated against its radial weights, givesin a neighbourhood of . Differentiating this fixed-radius convolution gives the uniform interior estimateThus the sequence is equicontinuous there; taking its pointwise limit gives the same local modulus of continuity for . A finite small-ball cover of now proves uniform convergence directly: choose the cover so both and vary by less than inside each ball, then use convergence at its finitely many centres to make there. The triangle inequality gives for large .
Finally, pass to the limit in the reproducing convolution identity on smaller compact sets. It yields , so is smooth locally. Also, for each compactly supported smooth test function , uniform convergence on its support givesHence its smooth Laplacian is zero. We have proved uniformly on every compact subset and is harmonic. Using the continuous representatives in the pointwise hypothesis makes this conclusion pointwise, rather than only almost everywhere. This is compact convergence of locally bounded harmonic functions.