Formal self-adjointness gives symmetry of , and strict positivity gives positive definiteness, so is an inner product. Bounded coefficients give . To prove the lower bound, uniform ellipticity gives
If no lower bound by the norm existed, choose with and . By weak convergence in a Hilbert space and the Rellich-Kondrachov compactness theorem, a subsequence has in and in . The principal energy has weak lower semicontinuity: it is the squared norm of the bounded multiplication operator . The potential term converges because is bounded. Hence
Strict positivity forces . The preceding ellipticity estimate now gives , while , contradicting . Thus strict positivity implies coercivity for an elliptic Dirichlet form, and
The new norm is equivalent to the original norm, so the space remains complete.
Assume . For each , define the bounded functional
Weak convergence makes convergent, hence bounded, for every . The Uniform boundedness principle gives
By the Riesz representation theorem, , so is bounded.
Taking in the definition of weak convergence in a Hilbert space gives
for every . Thus (i) implies (ii).
For each , define the bounded linear functional
The hypothesis is precisely that converges weakly to . In particular, for each fixed , the scalar sequence converges and is therefore bounded. Thus the family is pointwise bounded.
The Uniform boundedness principle gives
By the Riesz representation theorem, . Hence
so the sequence is bounded.