Real analytic solutions to the divergence equation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new differential-topological method to explicitly construct real analytic solutions to the divergence equation on annuli, differing from standard approaches and leveraging cohomological insights.

Contribution

It develops a novel differential-topological approach to solve the divergence equation explicitly, avoiding traditional methods like Bogovski's and Kapitanskii-Pileckas's techniques.

Findings

Explicit real analytic solutions on annuli with zero integral source term

Solution vector fields vanish on boundary of annuli

Method reduces problem to linear algebra

Abstract

In this paper, we develop a differential-topological method to yield explicit real analytic solutions $v$ to the divergence equation $div_{\mathbb{R}^n} v = f$ on any annali $A(R_1 ,R_2) = \{ x \in \mathbb{R}^n : R_1 < |x| < R_2\}$, with $n \geq 2$, and $0 < R_1 < R_2 < \infty$. The prescribed source term $f$ is supposed to be real analytic on $\overline{A(R_1 , R_2)} = \{ x \in \mathbb{R}^n : R_1 \leq |x| \leq R_2\}$ satisfying the zero integral condition on $A(R_1, R_2)$. The resulting solution $v$ is a real analytic vector field on $\overline{A(R_1 , R_2)}$, which vanishes on $\partial \big( A(R_1, R_2 ) \big )$. The method which we develop here is different from the standard Bogovski approach and the Kapitanskii-Pileckas approach. The first main step our method is a clever differential-topological argument, which we develop under the inspiration and guidance of the standard proof of the cohomological statement $H_c^n \big ( \mathbb{R}^n\big ) = \mathbb{R}$ in Spviak book A Comprehensive Introduction to Differential Geometry, Vol I. This allows us to reduce the problem to that of solving a linear algebra problem.