Distributions, partial differential equations, and harmonic analysis (Q5915583)

The first edition of this book was nicely reviewed in [Zbl 1308.46002]. There it is concluded that the first part of the book (Chapters 1--4) is devoted to the ideas and first applications of distribution theory, while the second part (Chapters 5--11) contains a great variety of explicit formulas for tempered fundamental solutions of classical partial differential equations and systems. The second edition contains additional sections in Chapter 7 and in the Appendix, and entirely new material on Sobolev spaces (Chapter 12). More precisely, in addition to operators considered in the first edition, new sections are devoted to the Helmholtz operator, the perturbed Dirac operator and their iterations, motivated by their importance in scattering theory. Necessary facts on Hankel functions related to this subject are added in the Appendix. The chapter on Sobolev spaces begins with the Fourier transform based treatment of global Sobolev spaces, which is followed by the consideration of Sobolev spaces on open sets in \( \mathbb{R}^n\). This is done in two ways: by considering restrictions from the corresponding global spaces, and in an intrinsic fashion via distributional derivatives. Sobolev spaces \(H^{1/2}\) of fractional order on boundaries of Lipschitz domains are considered in a separate section (a section on Lipschitz domains is added in the Appendix), and the chapter ends with traces and extensions of Sobolev spaces. This edition therefore keeps the virtues of the first edition, and contains additional material on fundamental solutions and a self-contained introduction to \(L^2\)-based Sobolev spaces.