Nonpotentiality of a diffusion system and the construction of a semi-bounded functional

Abstract

The wide prevalence and the systematic variational principles are used in mathematics and applications due to a series of remarkable consequences among which the possibility to establish the existence of the solutions of the initial equations, and the determination of stable approximations of the solutions of the considered equations by the so-called variational methods. In this connection, it is natural for a given system of equations to investigate the problem of the existence of its variational formulations. It can be considered as the inverse problem of the calculus of variations. The main goal of this work is to study this problem for a diffusion system of partial differential equations. A key object is the criterion of potentiality. On its ground, the nonpotentiality of the operator of the given boundary value problem with respect to the classical bilinear form is proved. This system does not admit a matrix variational multiplier of the given form. Thus, the diffusion system cannot be deduced from the classical Hamilton’s principle. We posed the question that whether there exists a functional semi-bounded on solutions to the boundary value problem. We have done the algorithm of the constructive determination of such a functional. The main value of constructed functional action will be in applications of direct variational methods.