Hilbert's talk at the second International Congress of 1900 in Paris marked the beginning of a new era in the calculus of variations. A development began which, within a few decades, brought tremendous success, highlighted by the 1929 theorem of Ljusternik and Schnirelman on the existence of three distinct prime closed geodesics on any compact surface of genus zero, and the 1930/31 solution of Plateau's problem by Douglas and Radรฒ. The book gives a concise introduction to variational methods and presents an overview of areas of current research in this field. This new edition has been substantially enlarged, a new chapter on the Yamabe problem has been added and the references have been updated. All topics are illustrated by carefully chosen examples, representing the current state of the art in their field
CONTENT
I. The Direct Methods in the Calculus of Variations -- II. Minimax Methods -- III. Limit Cases of the Palais-Smale Condition -- Appendix A -- Sobolev Spaces -- Hรถlder Spaces -- Imbedding Theorems -- Density Theorem -- Trace and Extension Theorems -- Poincarรฉ Inequality -- Appendix B -- Schauder Estimates -- Weak Solutions -- A Regularity Result -- Maximum Principle -- Weak Maximum Principle -- Application -- Appendix C -- Frรฉchet Differentiability -- Natural Growth Conditions -- References
SUBJECT
Mathematics
Mathematical analysis
Analysis (Mathematics)
System theory
Calculus of variations
Mathematics
Systems Theory
Control
Calculus of Variations and Optimal Control; Optimization