Modern Methods In The Calculus Of Variations Lp Spaces

This is the first of two books on methods and techniques in the calculus of variations. Contemporary arguments are used throughout the text to streamline and present in a unified way classical results, and to provide novel contributions at the forefront of the theory. This book addresses fundamental questions related to lower semicontinuity and relaxation of functionals within the unconstrained setting, mainly in L^p spaces. It prepares the ground for the second volume where the variational treatment of functionals involving fields and their derivatives will be undertaken within the framework of Sobolev spaces. This book is self-contained. All the statements are fully justified and proved, with the exception of basic results in measure theory, which may be found in any good textbook on the subject. It also contains several exercises. Therefore,it may be used both as a graduate textbook as well as a reference text for researchers in the field. Irene Fonseca is the Mellon College of Science Professor of Mathematics and is currently the Director of the Center for Nonlinear Analysis in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research interests lie in the areas of continuum mechanics, calculus of variations, geometric measure theory and partial differential equations. Giovanni Leoni is also a professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. He focuses his research on calculus of variations, partial differential equations and geometric measure theory with special emphasis on applications to problems in continuum mechanics and in materials science.

This book provides a comprehensive discussion on the existence and regularity of minima of regular integrals in the calculus of variations and of solutions to elliptic partial differential equations and systems of the second order. While direct methods for the existence of solutions are well known and have been widely used in the last century, the regularity of the minima was always obtained by means of the Euler equation as a part of the general theory of partial differential equations. In this book, using the notion of the quasi-minimum introduced by Giaquinta and the author, the direct methods are extended to the regularity of the minima of functionals in the calculus of variations, and of solutions to partial differential equations. This unified treatment offers a substantial economy in the assumptions, and permits a deeper understanding of the nature of the regularity and singularities of the solutions. The book is essentially self-contained, and requires only a general knowledge of the elements of Lebesgue integration theory.

Functional analysis owes much of its early impetus to problems that arise in the calculus of variations. In turn, the methods developed there have been applied to optimal control, an area that also requires new tools, such as nonsmooth analysis. This self-contained textbook gives a complete course on all these topics. It is written by a leading specialist who is also a noted expositor. This book provides a thorough introduction to functional analysis and includes many novel elements as well as the standard topics. A short course on nonsmooth analysis and geometry completes the first half of the book whilst the second half concerns the calculus of variations and optimal control. The author provides a comprehensive course on these subjects, from their inception through to the present. A notable feature is the inclusion of recent, unifying developments on regularity, multiplier rules, and the Pontryagin maximum principle, which appear here for the first time in a textbook. Other major themes include existence and Hamilton-Jacobi methods. The many substantial examples, and the more than three hundred exercises, treat such topics as viscosity solutions, nonsmooth Lagrangians, the logarithmic Sobolev inequality, periodic trajectories, and systems theory. They also touch lightly upon several fields of application: mechanics, economics, resources, finance, control engineering. Functional Analysis, Calculus of Variations and Optimal Control is intended to support several different courses at the first-year or second-year graduate level, on functional analysis, on the calculus of variations and optimal control, or on some combination. For this reason, it has been organized with customization in mind. The text also has considerable value as a reference. Besides its advanced results in the calculus of variations and optimal control, its polished presentation of certain other topics (for example convex analysis, measurable selections, metric regularity, and nonsmooth analysis) will be appreciated by researchers in these and related fields.

​This book introduces the basic concepts of real and functional analysis. It presents the fundamentals of the calculus of variations, convex analysis, duality, and optimization that are necessary to develop applications to physics and engineering problems. The book includes introductory and advanced concepts in measure and integration, as well as an introduction to Sobolev spaces. The problems presented are nonlinear, with non-convex variational formulation. Notably, the primal global minima may not be attained in some situations, in which cases the solution of the dual problem corresponds to an appropriate weak cluster point of minimizing sequences for the primal one. Indeed, the dual approach more readily facilitates numerical computations for some of the selected models. While intended primarily for applied mathematicians, the text will also be of interest to engineers, physicists, and other researchers in related fields.

Aimed primarily at undergraduate level university students, An Illustrative Introduction to Modern Analysis provides an accessible and lucid contemporary account of the fundamental principles of Mathematical Analysis. The themes treated include Metric Spaces, General Topology, Continuity, Completeness, Compactness, Measure Theory, Integration, Lebesgue Spaces, Hilbert Spaces, Banach Spaces, Linear Operators, Weak and Weak* Topologies. Suitable both for classroom use and independent reading, this book is ideal preparation for further study in research areas where a broad mathematical toolbox is required.

The book discusses basic concepts of functional analysis, measure and integration theory, calculus of variations and duality and its applications to variational problems of non-convex nature, such as the Ginzburg-Landau system in superconductivity, shape optimization models, dual variational formulations for micro-magnetism and others. Numerical Methods for such and similar problems, such as models in flight mechanics and the Navier-Stokes system in fluid mechanics have been developed through the generalized method of lines, including their matrix finite dimensional approximations. It concludes with a review of recent research on Riemannian geometry applied to Quantum Mechanics and Relativity. The book will be of interest to applied mathematicians and graduate students in applied mathematics. Physicists, engineers and researchers in related fields will also find the book useful in providing a mathematical background applicable to their respective professional areas.

This textbook is a completely revised, updated, and expanded English edition of the important Analyse fonctionnelle (1983). In addition, it contains a wealth of problems and exercises (with solutions) to guide the reader. Uniquely, this book presents in a coherent, concise and unified way the main results from functional analysis together with the main results from the theory of partial differential equations (PDEs). Although there are many books on functional analysis and many on PDEs, this is the first to cover both of these closely connected topics. Since the French book was first published, it has been translated into Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Romanian, Greek and Chinese. The English edition makes a welcome addition to this list.