Paper 1, Section I, D

Variational Principles | Part IB, 2021

Let DD be a bounded region of R2\mathbb{R}^{2}, with boundary D\partial D. Let u(x,y)u(x, y) be a smooth function defined on DD, subject to the boundary condition that u=0u=0 on D\partial D and the normalization condition that

Du2dxdy=1\int_{D} u^{2} d x d y=1

Let I[u]I[u] be the functional

I[u]=Du2dxdyI[u]=\int_{D}|\nabla u|^{2} d x d y

Show that I[u]I[u] has a stationary value, subject to the stated boundary and normalization conditions, when uu satisfies a partial differential equation of the form

2u+λu=0\nabla^{2} u+\lambda u=0

in DD, where λ\lambda is a constant.

Determine how λ\lambda is related to the stationary value of the functional I[u]I[u]. [[ Hint: Consider (uu)\boldsymbol{\nabla} \cdot(u \boldsymbol{\nabla} u).]

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