Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2018 / iii / Paper 105 / 3 / b / i / Solution

Formal self-adjointness gives symmetry of $B$, and strict positivity gives positive definiteness, so $B$ is an inner product. Bounded coefficients give $B[u,u]\le C\Vert u{\Vert }_{H^1}^2$. To prove the lower bound, uniform ellipticity givesIf no lower bound by the $H^1$ norm existed, choose $u_j\in H_0^1$ with $\Vert u_j{\Vert }_{H^1}=1$ and $B[u_j,u_j]\to 0$. By weak convergence in a Hilbert space and the Rellich-Kondrachov compactness theorem, a subsequence has $u_j\rightharpoonup u$ in $H_0^1$ and $u_j\to u$ in $L^2$. The principal energy has weak lower semicontinuity: it is the squared $L^2$ norm of the bounded multiplication operator $a^{1/2}Du$. The potential term converges because $c$ is bounded. HenceStrict positivity forces $u=0$. The preceding ellipticity estimate now gives $\Vert D{u}_j{\Vert }_2\to 0$, while $\Vert u_j{\Vert }_2\to 0$, contradicting $\Vert u_j{\Vert }_{H^1}=1$. Thus strict positivity implies coercivity for an elliptic Dirichlet form, andThe new norm is equivalent to the original norm, so the space remains complete.