This paper gives a characterization of Sobolev functions on the real line by means of pointwise inequalities involving finite differences. This is also shown to apply to more general Orlicz-Sobolev, Lorentz-Sobolev, and Lorentz-Karamata-Sobolev spaces.
We consider a boundary value problem in a bounded domain involving a degenerate operator of the form L ( u ) = − div ( a ( x ) ∇ u ) and a suitable nonlinearity f. The function a vanishes on smooth 1-codimensional submanifolds of Ω where it is not allowed to be C 2 . By using weighted Sobolev spaces we are still able to find existence of solutions which vanish, in the trace sense, on the set where a vanishes.