Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2022 iii Paper 107 2 d Solution Created 2026-09-28 Updated 2026-10-03
No. Let be the First Dirichlet eigenvalue of on , choose a corresponding nonzero eigenfunction , and takeThen and every vanishes on , so the boundary values converge uniformly to those of . But , and hence no subsequence converges uniformly on .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2024 iii Paper 107 4 b iii Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
Suppose a nonzero solution did not change sign. Replacing it by if necessary gives . The argument of part (b.ii) is local and invariant under translation and scaling: it applies on every ball whose concentric double lies in . If the zero set of had positive measure, a density point and this local result would make vanish on one ball. Applying the same result successively on overlapping balls would then give throughout the connected ball , a contradiction. Thus the zero set has measure zero in . Applying part (a.i) to givesfor every compactly supported function ; the omitted zero set has measure zero. But , while the variational characterization of the First Dirichlet eigenvalue provides a withThis contradiction proves that every nonzero solution takes both positive and negative values.
A weak solution belongs to and satisfieswith the nonlinear right-hand side defining a bounded functional on . Under the stated global Lipschitz hypothesis this requirement is automatic: and boundedness of give whenever . Continuity of alone, without growth control, would not guarantee this for an arbitrary Sobolev function.
For the semilinear Poisson contraction threshold, use the gradient norm on , and let satisfy the Poincaré inequality . For , Lax-Milgram gives the zero-Dirichlet Poisson solution . Testing with yields . Define , a self-map of the complete space . For ,Therefore is a sufficient condition for Banach's theorem to give a unique fixed point and hence a unique weak solution. There is no need to assume or to restrict to a small ball: the Lipschitz bound makes the map defined on all of . The same estimates giveWith the optimal Poincaré constant, the threshold is for the First Dirichlet eigenvalue; the stated sufficient condition does not depend on knowing that optimal constant.