Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 107 6 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
As printed, the hypotheses are insufficient. They order the barriers only on the boundary; the intended monotone iteration for a semilinear elliptic equation needs an ordered subsolution and supersolution throughout the domain. On , take a positive first Dirichlet Laplacian eigenfunction with , and setBoth barriers satisfy and vanish on the boundary, but inside. No function lies between them. This also disproves the unconditional conclusions in (b) and (d).
With the intended extra hypothesis on , solvability of the Poisson equation and the Schauder estimate give a unique with forcing and boundary data . Smooth composed with the barrier has the required forcing regularity. The barrier inequalities giveBoth differences have nonnegative boundary values. The weak maximum principle for elliptic operators applied to their negatives gives under the corrected hypothesis.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 107 6 d Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
With the interior ordering correction in part (a), iteration of part (c) givesThe bounded monotone sequence has a pointwise limit . By compact embedding of Hölder spaces, a subsequence converges in for , necessarily to this same limit. All convergent subsequences have that limit, so compactness gives convergence of the full sequence in . Passing to the limit in gives the equation and boundary values. The uniform Hölder seminorm bounds on second derivatives pass to the limit, so , and the barriers remain ordered:This proves the intended monotone iteration for a semilinear elliptic equation. With only the boundary ordering printed in the PDF, the counterexample in part (a) shows the requested trapped solution need not exist.