104 II Basic Function Spaces and Related Inequalities
Remark II.7.1 If the trace of u does not vanish at the boundary, that is,
if u does not satisfy (II.6 .50), Theorem II.7.1 should be suitably modified. In
fact, on the one hand, the function ψ
R
u does not satisfy the condition (II.7.4)
but, rather, it verifies the following one:
ψ
R
u ∈ W
1,q
(Ω), for all R > δ(Ω
c
).
So, from Theorem II.3. 1 it follows that, if Ω is locally Lipschitz, given ε > 0,
we may find a sufficiently large R and a function u
R,ε
∈ C
∞
0
(Ω) such that
|u
R,ε
− ψ
R
u|
1,q
< ε
and, as in the proof of Theorem II.7.1, we can prove that any u ∈ D
1,q
(Ω)
can be approximated in the seminorm | · |
1,q
by functions from C
∞
0
(Ω) for
q ≥ n. However, the same result continues to hold also when 1 ≤ q < n. In
fact, it suffices to notice that, for any u ∈ D
1,q
(Ω) with u
0
6= 0, the function
ψ
R
(u − u
0
), with u
0
defined in Lemma II.6.3, is of bounded support in Ω,
belongs to W
1,q
(Ω) and approaches u i n the semino rm | · |
1,q
. We thus have
the following.
Theorem II.7.2 Let Ω be locally Lipschitz, and let u ∈ D
1,q
(Ω). Then, u
can b e approximated in the norm | · |
1,q
by functions from C
∞
0
(Ω).
Exercise II.7.1 Let Ω be locally Lipschitz. Show that C
∞
0
(Ω) is dense in
˙
D
1,q
(Ω).
The technique employed in the proof of Theorem II.7.1 and Theorem II.7.2,
along with the results of T heorem II .6.4, allow us to generalize the previous
results to the space D
m,q
(Ω), m ≥ 1, in the following theorems, whose proofs
we leave to the reader as an exercise.
Theorem II.7.3 Let Ω ⊆ R
n
, n ≥ 2, be an exterior domain and let u ∈
D
m,q
(Ω), 1 ≤ q < ∞, m ≥ 1 . Then u ∈ D
m,q
(Ω) can be approximated in the
norm | · |
m,q
by functions from C
∞
0
(Ω) under the following assumptions.
(i) If q ∈ [1, n), u satisfies (II.6.50) and the following conditions hold:
u
m−`
≡ 0 , (II.7.9)
where ` ∈ {1, . . . , m} is the largest integers such that `q < n and the
polynomials u
m−`
are defined in Theorem I I.6.4.
(ii) If q ∈ [n, ∞), u satisfies (II.6 .50)
Theorem II.7.4 Let Ω be a locally Lipschitz, exterior domain of R
n
, n ≥ 2.
Then, every u ∈ D
m,q
(Ω) can b e approximated in the seminorm | · |
m,q
by
functions from C
∞
0
(Ω).