Potential theory (Q5901477)

Thirty years ago, as a graduate student, I studied ``Introduction to Potential Theory'' by \textit{L. L. Helms} [Pure and Applied Mathematics, Vol. 22, New York etc.: Wiley-Interscience a Division of John Wiley \& Sons (1969; Zbl 0188.17203)]. I found it well written and accessible, self-contained and efficient, and almost free from errors and gaps. The sections on the sweeping operation, the fine topology and the Martin boundary were somewhat rudimentary, but I could readily make up the deficit from other sources and was content with the foothold that Helms had given me in the subject. It was therefore with some interest that I learned of this new volume entitled \textit{Potential Theory} by the same author. Was it to be a revision of the original book or an entirely new text? The answer lies somewhere in between. The first six chapters of the present book closely resemble the first eleven chapters of the original. The remaining five chapters, which amount to about 40\% of the book, consist of new material. The result is a significantly more substantial text. A brief indication of the contents is given below. Chapters 1--6 introduce the standard core of classical potential theory. They cover harmonic functions and the Poisson integral, superharmonic functions and the Dirichlet problem for bounded regions, Green functions and potentials, polar sets and capacity, sweeping and the fine topology, energy and the Wiener criterion for thinness. There is some re-ordering of the material from the earlier volume, and freshly written sections on capacity, the sweeping operation and the fine topology. (An error in the original book concerning thinness is reproduced in Theorem 5.7.2, which needs the additional hypothesis that \(u(x)<\infty \).) As before, the Dirichlet problem on unbounded regions is treated separately. The Martin boundary is now completely omitted, but new material is added concerning the Neumann problem on the ball. There are almost no references here to the potential theoretic literature of the past 50 years. The remaining chapters have a different flavour and are more advanced. They culminate in showing that the oblique derivative problem for second order elliptic operators can be solved for regions satisfying certain geometric conditions. Before that, Chapters 7 and 8 discuss interpolation inequalities and monotonicity properties for norms on Hölder spaces of functions, and smoothness properties of potentials arising from certain types of kernel. Chapters 9 and 10 then deal with elliptic operators, and cover Schauder estimates, maximum principles, the Dirichlet problem, and a priori bounds for solutions of the oblique derivative problem. Many of the intermediate results are established for functions defined on a ``spherical chip'', by which is meant the intersection of a ball and a halfspace, on the understanding the intersection does not exceed half of the original ball. For example, Chapter 8 concludes by showing that, under appropriate hypotheses, there is a harmonic function on a spherical chip which has prescribed normal derivatives on the flat portion of the boundary and prescribed values elsewhere on the boundary. The purpose and intended readership of the book are best summarised in the words of the author: ``In planning this book, it became apparent that a deficiency in the 1969 book would have to be corrected to include a discussion of the Neumann problem, not only in preparation for a discussion of the oblique derivative boundary value problem but also to improve the basic part of the subject matter for the end user, engineers, physicists, etc. Generally speaking, the choice of topics was intended to make the book more pragmatic and less esoteric while exposing the reader to the major accomplishments by some of the most prominent mathematicians of the eighteenth through twentieth centuries\dots This book is targeted primarily at students with a background in a senior or graduate level course in real analysis which includes basic material on topology, measure theory, and Banach spaces.''