Weak solutionIn mathematics, a weak solution (also called a generalized solution) to an ordinary or partial differential equation is a function for which the derivatives may not all exist but which is nonetheless deemed to satisfy the equation in some precisely defined sense. There are many different definitions of weak solution, appropriate for different classes of equations. One of the most important is based on the notion of distributions.
Sobolev spaceIn mathematics, a Sobolev space is a vector space of functions equipped with a norm that is a combination of Lp-norms of the function together with its derivatives up to a given order. The derivatives are understood in a suitable weak sense to make the space complete, i.e. a Banach space. Intuitively, a Sobolev space is a space of functions possessing sufficiently many derivatives for some application domain, such as partial differential equations, and equipped with a norm that measures both the size and regularity of a function.
