EC | 8 |
Location | Radboud University |
Weeks | 6 - 21 |
Lecture | Tuesday, 10:00 - 12:45 |
Provider | Analysis and Dynamical Systems (NDNS+) |
Links | Course page (requires login) |
Prerequisites
Real Analysis, Functional Analysis, Measure Theory, in particular, knowledge of
The necessary background on these topics can be found in Chapters 2-5 in the book by Hans Wilhelm Alt, Linear Functional Analysis: An Application-Oriented Introduction, Springer.
Master-level courses on partial differential equations and functional analysis will be helpful, but are not mandatory.
Aim of the course
The calculus of variations is an active area of research with important applications in science and technology, e.g. in physics, materials science or image processing. Moreover, variational methods play an important role in many other disciplines of mathematics such as the theory of differential equations, optimization, geometry, and probability theory.
The goal of this course is to give an introduction to different facets of this interesting field, which is concerned with the minimization (or maximization) of functionals.
By the end of the course, the student should be able to
Lecturers