Let and define the map suggested by the variation-of-constants formula:
The strong continuity of the evolution family and the continuity of imply that maps into itself. Because is unitary and ,
Equip with the exponentially weighted supremum norm
This equivalent norm makes a Banach space. Using that is a globally Lipschitz function and that the unitary operator preserves the norm,
Choose . Then is a contraction mapping, so the Banach fixed-point theorem gives a unique fixed point . This fixed point is exactly the required mild solution of an abstract Cauchy problem:
The weighted-norm argument works on the whole prescribed finite interval, so no subdivision of is needed.
Set
Then the forced equation is the abstract Cauchy problem
For and , a mild solution of an abstract Cauchy problem is a function satisfying the variation-of-constants formula
Suppose and both and are continuous. If also , then the closedness of permits differentiation under the Bochner integral:
Thus and . The assumption is necessary here: a unitary group has no smoothing, so the conditions on alone cannot make differentiable for arbitrary .
For the resulting strong solution, skew symmetry of gives the energy estimate
Integration yields