Choose continuous representatives using Morrey's inequality. On the closed unit ball they are uniformly bounded by and satisfy
The Arzela-Ascoli theorem therefore gives a uniformly convergent subsequence with a continuous limit. For , use the uniform Lipschitz estimate instead; this part remains valid at that endpoint.
For weak lower semicontinuity of the Hilbert norm, weak convergence gives , and hence
Taking the lower limit proves .
For the nonlinear integral, use local Sobolev compactness gives lower semicontinuity of a nonnegative integral. Select a subsequence attaining the lower limit of the integrals. The Rellich-Kondrachov compactness theorem on successively larger balls gives a diagonal subsequence converging strongly in local L2 space to . After a further subsequence it converges almost everywhere. Since , the Fatou lemma gives
Each integral is finite because . The argument uses local compactness rather than convexity: is not a convex function on the whole real line.
Take the weak topology on the reflexive Banach space . A bounded linear operator is weak-to-weak continuous: implies for every , by its adjoint operator. The weak lower semicontinuity of the Hilbert norm therefore makes weakly sequentially lower semicontinuous.
This functional is finite everywhere and nonnegative. If it has coercivity, the direct method in the calculus of variations supplies a global minimizer . Squaring the residual does not change its global minimizers. Here the adjoint operator has codomain , since the source is a Banach space. Differentiating the squared residual along every real direction gives in the dual pairing, hence the normal equation for a linear inverse problem . Hence
The converse fails. For , , and , the datum is in the operator range, but while . Thus admissible data do not imply coercivity of the residual; an unpenalized null space already prevents it.
If , the claim is immediate. Otherwise weak convergence gives
By Cauchy-Schwarz,
Taking the lower limit and dividing by proves the weak lower semicontinuity of the Hilbert norm:
The second estimate in part (a) bounds in . The periodic Poisson equation and the supplied curl identity then bound in and in . After passing to a subsequence,
The Rellich-Kondrachov compactness theorem also gives strong convergence in the corresponding spaces with one fewer derivative. In particular, in and in , so
Passing to the limit in the Galerkin equations gives
These identities have the claimed Sobolev regularity, and the first holds in . Finally, the weak lower semicontinuity of the Hilbert norm preserves the estimates