Generalized Lax-Milgram theorem in Banach spaces and its application to the elliptic system of boundary value problems

We generalize the well-known Lax-Milgram theorem on the Hilbert space to that on the Banach space. Suppose that ${a(\cdot, \cdot)}$ is a continuous bilinear form on the product ${X\times Y}$ of Banach spaces X and Y, where Y is reflexive. If null spaces N _X and N _Y associated with ${a(\cdot, \cdot)}$ have complements in X and in Y, respectively, and if ${a(\cdot, \cdot)}$ satisfies certain variational inequalities both in X and in Y, then for every ${F \in N_Y^{\perp}}$ , i.e., ${F \in Y^{\ast}}$ with ${F(\phi) = 0}$ for all ${\phi \in N_Y}$ , there exists at least one ${u \in X}$ such that ${a(u, \varphi) = F(\varphi)}$ holds for all ${\varphi \in Y}$ with ${\|u\|_X \le C\|F\|_{Y^{\ast}}}$ . We apply our result to several existence theorems of L ^r -solutions to the elliptic system of boundary value problems appearing in the fluid mechanics.