Ascoli-Arzelà and compact embedding of $W^{1,p}(\Omega)$

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Let $\Omega\subseteq \mathbb{R}^n$ be open, bounded and with $C^1$ boundary. I want to prove that $W^{1,p}(\Omega)$ is compactly embedded into $L^p(\Omega)$ for $n<p\leq \infty$.

I was prompted to use Morrey's inequality and Ascoli-Arzelà theorem, so, let $K\subseteq W^{1,p}(\Omega)$ be bounded in the $W^{1,p}(\Omega)$ norm. By Morrey's inequality, $K\subseteq C^{0,\gamma}(\bar{\Omega})$ and it is bounded in the $C^{0,\gamma}(\bar{\Omega})$ norm, hence in the $C(\bar{\Omega})$ norm.

If I knew $K$ was equicontinuous, thanks to the completeness of $C(\bar{\Omega})$ (which holds since $\Omega$ is bounded), I would get by Ascoli-Arzelà that $K$ is relatively compact in $C(\bar{\Omega})$.

So I'm actually stuck at two points: how do I prove equicontinuity, and how do I use the fact that $K$ is relatively compact in $C(\bar{\Omega})$ to show that $K$ is relatively compact in $L^p(\Omega)$?

Best Answer

You have to use the fact that $K$ is bounded in some Holder norm. So you have for some $\gamma>0$ $$ |f(x)-f(y)|\le C\|x-y\|^{\gamma}, $$ where $C$ is a universal constant. Therefore whenever $\|x-y\|$ is small, $|f(x)-f(y)|$ is also small. This is equicontinuity.

For your second question, you can take a sequence $f_n$. By compactness, it has a convergent subsequence in $C(\Omega)$. But since $\Omega$ is bounded, the $L^p$-norm of the difference is obviously controlled by the uniform norm, $$ \|f_n-f\|_p\le C\|f-f_n\|_{\infty} $$ so $f$ is the limit also in the $L^p$-sense. That proves compactness in $L^p(\Omega)$.

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