UNIQUENESS OF EXTENDABLE TEMPERATURES

Abstract

AbstractLet E and D be open subsets of $\mathbb {R}^{n+1}$ such that $\overline {D}$ is a compact subset of E, and let v be a supertemperature on E. A temperature u on D is called extendable by v if there is a supertemperature w on E such that $w=u$ on D and $w=v$ on $E\backslash \overline D$ . From earlier work of N. A. Watson, [‘Extendable temperatures’, Bull. Aust. Math. Soc.100 (2019), 297–303], either there is a unique temperature extendable by v, or there are infinitely many; a necessary condition for uniqueness is that the generalised solution of the Dirichlet problem on D corresponding to the restriction of v to $\partial _eD$ is equal to the greatest thermic minorant of v on D. In this paper we first give a condition for nonuniqueness and an example to show that this necessary condition is not sufficient. We then give a uniqueness theorem involving the thermal and cothermal fine topologies and deduce a corollary involving only parabolic and coparabolic tusks.