Dirichlet's principle

In mathematics, and particularly in

potential theory, Dirichlet's principle is the
assumption that the minimizer of a certain
energy functional is a solution to Poisson's
equation.

Formal statement
Dirichlet's principle states that, if the
function is the solution to Poisson's
equation
on a domain of with boundary
condition

on the boundary ,

then u can be obtained as the minimizer of

the Dirichlet energy

amongst all twice differentiable functions

such that on (provided that
there exists at least one function making
the Dirichlet's integral finite). This concept
is named after the German mathematician
Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet.

History
The name "Dirichlet's principle" is due to
Riemann, who applied it in the study of
complex analytic functions.[1]

Riemann (and others such as Gauss and

Dirichlet) knew that Dirichlet's integral is
bounded below, which establishes the
existence of an infimum; however, he took
for granted the existence of a function that
attains the minimum. Weierstrass
published the first criticism of this
assumption in 1870, giving an example of
a functional that has a greatest lower
bound which is not a minimum value.
Weierstrass's example was the functional

where is continuous on ,
continuously differentiable on ,
and subject to boundary conditions
, where and are
constants and . Weierstrass showed
that , but no admissible
function can make equal 0. This
example did not disprove Dirichlet's
principle per se, since the example integral
is different from Dirichlet's integral. But it
did undermine the reasoning that Riemann
had used, and spurred interest in proving
Dirichlet's principle as well as broader
advancements in the calculus of variations
and ultimately functional analysis.[2][3]

In 1900, Hilbert later justified Riemann's

use of Dirichlet's principle by developing
the direct method in the calculus of
variations.[4]

See also
Dirichlet problem
Hilbert's twentieth problem
Plateau's problem
Green's first identity
Notes
1. Monna 1975, p. 33
2. Monna 1975, p. 33–37,43–44
3. Giaquinta and Hildebrand, p. 43–44
4. Monna 1975, p. 55–56, citing Hilbert, David
(1905), "Über das Dirichletsche Prinzip",
Journal für die reine und angewandte
Mathematik (in German), 1905 (129): 63–
67, doi:10.1515/crll.1905.129.63 (https://do
i.org/10.1515%2Fcrll.1905.129.63) ,
S2CID 120074769 (https://api.semanticsch
olar.org/CorpusID:120074769)
References
Courant, R. (1950), Dirichlet's Principle,
Conformal Mapping, and Minimal
Surfaces. Appendix by M. Schiffer,
Interscience
Lawrence C. Evans (1998), Partial
Differential Equations, American
Mathematical Society, ISBN 978-0-8218-
0772-9
Giaquinta, Mariano; Hildebrandt, Stefan
(1996), Calculus of Variations I, Springer
A. F. Monna (1975), Dirichlet's principle:
A mathematical comedy of errors and its
 influence on the development of analysis,
Oosthoek, Scheltema & Holkema
Weisstein, Eric W. "Dirichlet's Principle"
(https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Dirichl
etsPrinciple.html) . MathWorld.

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