L2 Well-Posedness of Planar Div-Curl Systems

Criteria for the existence and uniqueness of solutions of div-curl boundary value problems on bounded planar regions with nice boundaries are developed. The boundary conditions to be treated include prescribed normal component of the field, tangential component of the field and disjoint combinations of these conditions. Under natural assumptions on the data, when either tangential or normal components are given on the whole boundary, weak (finite-energy) solutions exist if and only if a compatibility condition holds. If the region is simply connected this solution is unique. When the region is multiply connected, there is a finite-dimensional family of solutions. The dimension of the solution space is the Betti number of the region. The problem is well-posed with a unique solution when certain line integrals are further prescribed. L ² estimates of the solutions are given. If mixed tangential, and normal, components of the field are specified on different parts of the boundary, no compatibility condition is required for solvability. In general, though, there is considerable non-uniqueness of solutions. Well-posedness is recovered by specifying certain line integrals. L ² estimates of the solutions are given. The dimensionality of the solution space depends on the topology of the boundary data. These results depend on certain weighted orthogonal decompositions of L ² vector fields on the region which are related to classical Hodge-Weyl decomposition results.