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Calculus of Variations

EC8
LocationRadboud University
Weeks6 - 21
LectureMonday, 10:30 - 13:15
Provider Analysis and Dynamical Systems (NDNS+)
LinksCourse page (requires login)

Summary

Prerequisites

Real Analysis, Functional Analysis, Measure Theory; specifically, knowledge of:

The necessary background on these topics can be found in Chapters 2-5 in the book by H. W. Alt, or in Chapter 4 of H. Brezis for Lp-spaces.

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 introduce 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:

Rules of Homework and Exam

The course counts for 8 EC.

Homework is bi-weekly.


The exam will be written if sufficiently many students are taking it.
Otherwise, it will be an oral exam.

The students pass the course if the final grade is at least 6.
If the exam grade is at least 5 and if the homework grade (obtained by solving the problem sheets) is better than the exam grade, the final grade will be the weighted average of both:

75% exam   /   25% homework grade.

Rounding will be done at the end of the above computation.

Lecture notes/literature

Lecture notes will be developed and made available during the course.
They will contain all the material covered in class, and also additional material (not necessary for the exam) to give a more comprehensive overview of the subject.
There is no need to buy any book.

For further reading we recommend:

For the background material on functional analysis and PDEs:


For the main content of the course: