Hodge decompositions with mixed boundary conditions and applications to partial differential equations on Lipschitz manifolds (Q549439)

The authors discuss the exterior derivative \(d\) on a Lipschitz manifold with boundary \(\Omega\) (contained in a compact Riemannian Lipschitz manifold) subject to Dirichlet type boundary conditions on a part \(\Sigma\subseteq\partial\Omega\) and its adjoint \(d^{*}=\delta\) in the canonical \(L^{2}\)-structure induced by the Riemannian metric tensor. The boundary condition for \(\omega\in D\left(d\right)\) restricted to \(\partial\Omega\) amounts to the vanishing of the tangential components of \(\omega\) on \(\Sigma\). The induced boundary condition for \(\omega\in D\left(\delta\right)\) is similarly the vanishing of the normal component of \(\omega\) on the complement \(\Sigma^{\prime}\) of \(\Sigma\) in \(\partial\Omega\). The study of systems involving both \(d\) and \(\delta\) such as \(d+\delta\) associated with the generalized Maxwell system (Hodge-Dirac system) show therefore a mixture of the two boundary conditions. The authors extend earlier known results on Hodge decompositions to this new mixed boundary condition case. The paper also shows that the dimension of the space of harmonic alternating differential forms with \textit{mixed} boundary conditions is given by the sum of the suitably adjusted topological Betti numbers. The final chapter deals with applications to mixed boundary value problems for the Hodge-Laplacian \(\left(d+\delta\right)^{2}=d\delta+\delta d\) and the Hodge-Dirac operator \(d+\delta\).