Triplets of closely embedded Hilbert spaces (Q487206)

\textit{I. M. Gel'fand} and \textit{A. G. Kostyuchenko} [Dokl. Akad. Nauk SSSR 103, 349--352 (1955; Zbl 0065.10402)] introduced the concept of a rigged Hilbert space to propose a general setting that includes both the theory of {P. A. M Dirac} based on bras and kets and the theory of {J. von Neumann} based on positive selfadjoint operators in Hilbert spaces. In their work, a rigged Hilbert space is a triplet \((\mathcal{S; H;S^*})\), where \(\mathcal{H}\) is a complex Hilbert space, \(\mathcal{S}\) is a topological vector space continuously and densely embedded in \(\mathcal{H}\), and \(\mathcal{S^*}\) is vaguely defined as the dual space of \(\mathcal{S}\) with respect to \(\mathcal{H}\). Later, \textit{Yu. M. Berezanskij} in [Selfadjoint operators in spaces of functions of infinitely many variables. Transl. from the Russian by H. H. McFaden, ed. by Ben Silver. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society (AMS) (1986; Zbl 0596.47019)] gave a clear meaning to the vague notion of the dual space of \(\mathcal{S}\) with respect to \(\mathcal{H}\) by constructing a triplet of continuously embedded Hilbert spaces with certain properties. This method is based on a positive selfadjoint operator \(H\) in \(\mathcal{H}\) whose inverse \(H^{-1}\) is bounded. In the present paper, the authors extend Brezansky's works to a triplet of closely embedded Hilbert spaces associated with a positive selfadjoint operator whose inverse is not necessarily bounded. Their results are applied to show the existence of weak solutions for a Dirichlet problem associated to a class of degenerate elliptic partial differential equations without coercivity conditions and Poincaré-Sobolev type inequalities.