Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2025 iii Paper 107 2 c Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
The boundary data are encoded by the Affine Sobolev spaceA function is a weak solution of the homogeneous p-Laplacian equation when
For existence, take a minimizing sequence for the p-energy on . The Poincare inequality bounds in by its gradient, so the sequence is bounded in the reflexive Banach space . A weakly convergent subsequence remains in the weakly closed affine space, and convexity of gives weak lower semicontinuity. The direct method in the calculus of variations therefore produces a minimizer, whose first variation is precisely the displayed weak equation.