Dirichlet form

$$ \newcommand{\dd}{\mathrm{d}} \newcommand{\R}{\mathbb{R}} $$

A Dirichlet form refers to a quadratic functional defined by an integral of the form \[ \iint_{\R^n \times \R^n} (u(y)-u(x))^2 k(x,y)\, \dd x \dd y, \] for some nonnegative kernel $K$.

If the kernel $K$ satisfies the bound $K(x,y) \leq \Lambda |x-y|^{-n-s}$, then the quadratic form is bounded in $\dot H^{s/2}$. If moreover, $\lambda |x-y|^{-n-s} \leq K(x,y)$, then the form is comparable to the norm in $\dot H^{s/2}$ squared.

Dirichlet forms are natural generalizations to fractional order of the Dirichlet integrals \[ \int a_{ij}(x) \partial_i u \partial_j u \dd x, \] where $a_{ij}$ is elliptic.

The Euler-Lagrange equation of a Dirichlet form is a fractional order version of elliptic equations in divergence form. They are studied using variational methods and they are expected to satisfy similar properties .

References

(There should be a lot more references here)