Poisson equations with nonlinear source terms on networks (Q945583)

C. Berenstein and Soon-Young Chung introduced an elliptic operator, \(\Delta_\omega\) refered to be a \(\omega\)-Laplacian, \(\Delta_\omega\) of a function \(u: V(G)\to\mathbb R\) on a weighted graph \(G\) is defined by \[ \Delta_\omega u(x):= \sum_{y\in V(G)} |u(y)- u(x)|{\omega(x, y)\over d_\omega x}, \] where \(x\in V(G)\), and \(\omega(x, y)\) is the weight on the edge connecting vertices \(x\) and \(y\), and \(d_\omega x= \sum_{y\to x}\omega(x, y)\). This can be physically interpreted as a diffusion equation on the graph modeled by electric network. The authors also define the directional derivatives \(D_{\omega, y}\) and the gradient vector \(\nabla_\omega\) on networks and considered the \(\omega\)-Laplacian \(\Delta_\omega\), as follows: \[ \Delta_\omega u(x):= -\sum_{y\in S}(D^2_{\omega, y}u)(x),\quad x\in V(G). \] By these interpretations the author also considers the \(\omega\)-Laplacian, \(\Delta_\omega\), as an elliptic operator on networks so the reader can apply the tools of partial differential equations to network problems. An example for this is given in the Dirichlet boundary value problem for the Poisson equation on networks which is solved in the paper. A theorem proven is as follows: Theorem. Let \(S\) be a subgraph of a host graph with a weight \(\omega\) and \(\sigma:\partial S\to\mathbb R\) is a given function. Then the unique solution \(u\) is proven for the Dirichlet boundary value problem, \[ \Delta_\sigma u(x)= g(x),\quad x\in S,\qquad u|_{\partial S}= \sigma. \] The author proves a representation for the solution using the discrete Green's function on \(S\). Several results prove existence and uniqueness of solutions with suitable source terms.