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Existence of Weak Solutions of Linear Subelliptic Dirichlet Problems With Rough Coefficients

This article gives an existence theory for weak solutions of second order non-elliptic linear Dirichlet problems of the form {eqnarray} \nabla'P(x)\nabla u +{\bf HR}u+{\bf S'G}u +Fu &=& f+{\bf T'g} \textrm{in}Θu&=&ϕ\textrm{on}\partial Θ.{eqnarray} The principal part $ξ'P(x)ξ$ of the above equation is assumed to be comparable to a quadratic form ${\cal Q}(x,ξ) = ξ'Q(x)ξ$ that may vanish for non-zero $ξ\in\mathbb{R}^n$. This is achieved using techniques of functional analysis applied to the degenerate Sobolev spaces $QH^1(Θ)=W^{1,2}(Ω,Q)$ and $QH^1_0(Θ)=W^{1,2}_0(Θ,Q)$ as defined in recent work of E. Sawyer and R. L. Wheeden. The aforementioned authors in referenced work give a regularity theory for a subset of the class of equations dealt with here.