Varying the gauge-fixed Polyakov action gives the bulk wave equation and the boundary term
It vanishes in each target direction either through the Neumann boundary condition
or through the Dirichlet boundary condition
which fixes the endpoint positions.
Let , where the centered second-difference matrix is real symmetric negative definite under homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions, and the centered first-difference matrix is real skew-symmetric. Hence
The semidiscrete energy method gives for every real , so the scheme is stable.
The flat four-dimensional retarded Green function is
For a Dirichlet boundary condition at , the method of images gives
The boundary-to-bulk kernel for is its inward boundary derivative. For a source at the spacetime origin,
Multiplying by the Weyl factor gives the requested kernel for the original bulk field:
It is causal and supported on the future bulk light cone of the boundary insertion. Its distributional boundary limit satisfies , while the source-free initial term vanishes for the CFT vacuum in this response calculation.
Put . The common Dirichlet boundary condition gives on . Expanding the energy functional,
Integration by parts and the field equation make the cross term zero:
Consequently
For , equality holds exactly when . For , equality holds exactly when , so is constant on the connected region; its zero boundary value then again forces . The minimizing property therefore proves uniqueness for the Dirichlet problem in both cases:
Inside the infinite square well, the time-independent Schrodinger equation has Dirichlet boundary conditions at and . Its normalized energy eigenstates and energy eigenvalues are
Let and use the clamped energy space , whose traces satisfy on . Two applications of integration by parts give
If equality holds, then . The maximum principle for harmonic functions and the zero Dirichlet boundary condition imply . The biharmonic operator is therefore positive definite. The same identity and conclusion hold for the simply supported conditions ; either standard interpretation of the paper's phrase “zero boundary conditions” gives the result.
Let be the spatial matrix, so the Forward Euler method is
The conservative use of shared edge coefficients makes a real symmetric matrix. In an interior row, put . Its diagonal entry is , and the sum of the absolute off-diagonal entries is . Boundary rows have no larger disk because homogeneous Dirichlet data remove some unknown neighbors.
The Gershgorin circle theorem and symmetry therefore place every eigenvalue of in
If , each amplification eigenvalue is . It lies in whenever
or
Since the amplification matrix is symmetric, bounding all its eigenvalues in modulus by one bounds its discrete Euclidean operator norm by one. This proves the stated stability condition and is the Gershgorin stability bound for a variable-coefficient diffusion stencil.
The zero-boundary Sobolev space is
On it define
If this quadratic form vanishes, then . The Poincare inequality gives
so . It is therefore an inner product, and its norm is equivalent to the usual norm.
A function is a weak solution when
This follows from integration by parts and incorporates the homogeneous Dirichlet boundary condition through membership in .
Extend a grid vector by zero to the Dirichlet boundary. Pairing contributions along undirected nearest-neighbour edges gives the discrete energy identity
where includes edges from an interior node to a boundary node. This is the three-dimensional version of summation by parts for the seven-point Dirichlet Laplacian.
The right side is nonpositive. If it vanishes, every pair of neighbouring values agrees; connectivity of the grid and the zero boundary values then imply . Thus for every nonzero , so is negative definite. In particular, zero is not an eigenvalue, and therefore
Take the real inner product of the equation with . The homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions and integration by parts give
Thus , and applying the same estimate to the difference of two solutions gives continuous dependence on the initial data. The constant-advection term is skew-symmetric under these boundary conditions and contributes no energy. Hence
For with homogeneous Dirichlet data at and , integration by parts shows that . Its homogeneous kernel is
because vanishes at both endpoints exactly when .
The forcing obeys the orthogonality condition
The Fredholm alternative for an elliptic Dirichlet problem therefore says that solutions exist, though they are not unique. Indeed,
satisfies and both boundary conditions for every constant .
Let and apply the Itô formula to for . The heat equation cancels the drift, so the stopped process is a bounded martingale. The optional sampling theorem for a supermartingale gives . On the three mutually exclusive terminal events, the initial and Dirichlet boundary conditions identify this value as
This is the probabilistic representation of the heat equation with time-dependent Dirichlet data.
Seek a radial function on the unit ball. The equation and regularity at the origin give
Hence , and the zero Dirichlet boundary condition gives
The power is twice differentiable at the origin exactly when . Here , so at the origin exactly when . Under the assumption , this weak solution is never at the origin, exhibiting the regularity loss caused by degenerate ellipticity.
Varying the Polyakov action with respect to the worldsheet metric gives
In conformal gauge, variation of gives the wave equation
while the Virasoro constraints become and . The boundary variation is at each endpoint. It vanishes through a Neumann boundary condition , a Dirichlet boundary condition , or a direction-by-direction mixture of the two.
Multiply the Poisson equation by and apply Green's first identity. The Dirichlet boundary condition makes the trace of vanish on , while the Neumann boundary condition makes the boundary flux vanish on . Thus the weak formulation is: find such that
where
First choose a test function . The weak formulation and integration by parts give
The fundamental lemma of the calculus of variations implies pointwise because and is continuous. The Dirichlet boundary condition on already follows from and continuity of .
For arbitrary , Green's first identity and the interior equation now reduce the weak identity to
The traces of smooth members of can be chosen freely on compact subsets of . Another application of the fundamental lemma of the calculus of variations, now on the boundary, gives pointwise on . Hence is a classical solution of the complete mixed boundary value problem.
Apply part (b) to . Its zero boundary value gives
The assumptions say that for every and that uniformly. Thus the integrand converges pointwise to zero and is dominated by , whose expectation is finite by part (a). The dominated convergence theorem gives for every .
In a fixed-temperature convection problem, the boundary temperature is prescribed, and its perturbation satisfies a thermal Dirichlet boundary condition. A homogeneous condition means the boundary follows the prescribed conductive background temperature. This does not necessarily mean a vertical wall has a spatially constant temperature; that additional assumption can conflict with a background vertical gradient.
Piecewise-linear hat function Created 2026-09-28 Updated 2026-10-05
A piecewise-linear hat function is one at one mesh node, zero at all other nodes, and affine on each adjacent mesh interval. Interior hat functions form the standard nodal basis for continuous piecewise-linear finite elements with homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions.
For on with initial data and time-dependent Dirichlet boundary conditions , stop Brownian motion at its first hit of or . Applying Itô formula to yields