Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2010 / iii / Paper 5 / 3

As usual, the bounded set is assumed Lebesgue measurable and an $L^q$ exponent is positive; the conventional Banach-space assertion concerns $1\le q<2^{\ast }=2n/(n-2)$. No boundary regularity of $\Omega$ is needed. Choose a smooth compactly supported cutoff $\eta$ equal to one on a ball containing $\Omega$. Weak convergence and the Uniform boundedness principle give a common $H^1$ bound for $f_j$, hence also for $g_j=\eta f_j$. These functions have a common compact support.

We prove their local $L^2$ compactness directly. Translation and the fundamental theorem along line segments give, by density from smooth functions,For a compactly supported mollifier ${\rho }_{\epsilon }$, integration of this estimate givesAt fixed $\epsilon$, Hölder's inequality bounds $\Vert g_j\ast {\rho }_{\epsilon }{\Vert }_{\infty }$ and $\Vert \nabla (g_j\ast {\rho }_{\epsilon }){\Vert }_{\infty }$ uniformly by the $L^2$ norm of the corresponding smoothing kernels. Their supports lie in one fixed compact set, so the Arzelà-Ascoli theorem makes this smoothed family precompact in $L^2$. The uniform $O(\epsilon )$ approximation makes the original family totally bounded in $L^2$: choose a finite net for the smoothed family and add the approximation error. Completeness gives relative compactness.

Every strongly convergent subsequence of $g_j$ has limit $\eta f$, since multiplication by $\eta$ preserves weak $L^2$ convergence. Consequently the whole sequence converges strongly: otherwise a subsequence with distance at least a fixed positive number would have a further convergent subsequence and contradict that unique limit. In particular $\Vert {\chi }_{\Omega }(f_j-f){\Vert }_2\to 0$.

The critical Sobolev inequality supplies a uniform bound in $L^{2^{\ast }}$. For clarity, this estimate follows from part 2(a), not from compactness at the critical exponent. For a compactly supported smooth $v$, integrating by parts against the vector field $(x-y)/|x-y{|}^n$ givesIts distributional divergence is the sphere-area multiple of a point mass; applying the Hardy–Littlewood–Sobolev inequality with $\alpha =1,p=2$ yields $\Vert v{\Vert }_{2^{\ast }}\le C\Vert \nabla v{\Vert }_2$. Density extends this to $H^1({\mathbb{R}}^n)$.

For $2<q<2^{\ast }$ choose $0<\theta <1$ with $1/q=\theta /2+(1-\theta )/2^{\ast }$. Hölder's inequality givesFor $1\le q<2$, use $\Vert v{\Vert }_{L^q(\Omega )}\le |\Omega {|}^{1/q-1/2}\Vert v{\Vert }_{L^2(\Omega )}$. The same integral estimate also works for $0<q<1$ if $L^q$ is understood with its usual quasi-norm. Thus ${\chi }_{\Omega }{f}_j\to {\chi }_{\Omega }f$ strongly for every positive $q<2^{\ast }$. We have never asserted that multiplying by the possibly nonsmooth indicator preserves $H^1$.

For a bounded connected domain with the interior cone property, and $1\le p<n$, the mean-zero form of the Poincaré inequality isNo zero boundary trace is imposed. Subtracting the mean is essential because nonzero constants have zero gradient.

Suppose the estimate failed. Subtract means and normalize to obtain $v_j\in W^{1,p}(\Omega )$ withThis sequence is bounded in the Sobolev space $W^{1,p}$. The allowed Rellich-Kondrachov compactness theorem on cone domains provides a subsequence converging strongly in $L^p(\Omega )$ to $v$. Its mean is zero and its norm is one. For any compactly supported smooth test function $\varphi$,Thus every weak derivative of $v$ vanishes. To show this implies constancy, mollify on any ball compactly contained in $\Omega$. The resulting smooth function has zero gradient and is constant on the smaller ball. Passing to its $L^p$ limit makes $v$ constant almost everywhere on that ball. Overlapping balls have the same constant, and connectedness connects any two points by a chain of such balls. Hence $v$ is constant almost everywhere throughout $\Omega$. Its zero mean makes it zero, contradicting norm one. This proves the stated Poincaré inequality. The frequently used stronger Sobolev-Poincare formulation also follows: with $p^{\ast }=np/(n-p)$, the cone-domain Sobolev embedding theorem gives $\Vert w{\Vert }_{p^{\ast }}\le C_S(\Vert w{\Vert }_p+\Vert \nabla w{\Vert }_p)$. Insert $w=v-v_{\Omega }$ and the estimate just proved to obtainThus both the same-exponent and critical-exponent mean-zero versions are covered. Connectedness cannot be dropped without subtracting a separate mean on every component. The usual meaning of the stated range is $1\le p<n$; $W^{1,p}$ with $p<1$ is not part of this Sobolev-space formulation.